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"Art games aren't innovative and innovation isn't good"

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Uncovering the hidden meaning of the article's title with the magic of boolean algebra:

ArtGames = !Innovative & Innovative = !Good

-> ArtGames = !Innovative & !Innovative = Good

-> ArtGames = Good

-> !ArtGames = !Good

There you have it, the real title of the article:

"Art games are good, and non-art games are not good"

seriously, the title should've been "art games aren't always innovative and innovation isn't always good" to avoid misinterpretation.

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I hate the word "innovation." It reeks of marketing-speak, and usually means "we added a feature!" Does anyone ever talk Shakespeare of Michaelango being "innovative" artists? Would you use that word to describe books? Movies? Public graffiti murals?

Innovative is a word used to describe consumer electronics products that are shinier than the last one. I hate it, hate it, hate it, and it should have no bearing on any kind of "art" question.

That said, new gameplay paradigms or unique twists on old mechanisms can certainly affect the aesthetic value of a game. But it depends on context: what is the effect of the mechanic or (ugh) innovation on the player, and how she experiences the game, etc.

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Would you use that word to describe books? Movies? Public graffiti murals?

Yes. Although it's harder to coin innovation in literature.

On a more global note, innovation is just a word, ok bullshit, ok marketing, but it has nothing to do with this poor word.

Over that, innovation is pretty impossible to define at the time of the release because to innovate means "to bring something new" as in "it has to be reused, recognized by the media and digested in the video-game grammar".

So when a product comes out, you'd have a hard time defining if it'll bring something new, forth, or if it's "new" traits or if it'll fail.

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I think innovative games are important even if they are not successful or awesome. Even if it means some other game will later perfect the new mechanic that a crappy game introduced first, it is important that that crappy game was made so that what comes after it may learn from it. Narbacular Drop -> Portal maybe being a good example (I don't know, did not play Narbacular Drop)

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Indeed. Also PoP:WW -> PoP:TT is a good example of innovation.

In PoP:WW they added innovative shit, and in PoP:TT they used toilet paper.

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Narbacular Drop was fine. I don't think it's very apt to say that it wasn't great because it tried to do something innovative and Portal was great because it didn't have to since it was a sequel. One had a few guys working on it with a budget of nothing, the other had Valve's backing and millions of dollars.

Saying people shouldn't try to make innovative games because they can't be as fully rounded and polished is like saying we shouldn't ever let people make their first game because they are likely to be a bit crap. Every genre was a crazy new thing at some point. If somewhat lacking products are so terrible the whole damn industry should have packed its bags sometime around 1981.

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Who is saying that people shouldn't make innovative games?! This article was about people fawning over innovation as if it's the be-all-and-end-all of gaming and about game designers who think that innovation is the only thing they need in a game and forgetting to bring in the fun.

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