[...] seeking out of new thing is one of the reasons why players ask for "innovation". They want something new that they haven't seen before. But, as I hinted in that linked article, [...]

Depends on what is being mixed. Adding RPG elements to an existing genre of gameplay isn't necessarily that innovative given the games that have already done so in the past several years. And, to be honest, "My game is like X, but with elements of Y" is so common that it's almost cliché at this point; not sure we can really call it innovation.

Even we call it innovation, the point of my article is that not every innovation is going to be a success, so players need to be patient. It's going to take a lot of mixing of different elements to find the one that works great. Some companies might get lucky and strike a good combination early, but that's still fairly rare.

The trick is to create good innovations....

Sure, that seems obvious. But, again, the point of my article was that you can't really anticipate what will make a good innovation. The only real way to test a possible innovation is to put it out in front of your actual audience.

I believe that test audiences and small betas might give you hints about what might work, but they aren't authoritative. Plus, sometimes people don't know what they want so something a typical tester doesn't like might otherwise find wide acceptance. Again, see the derision that was heaped on the Wii but look at its astounding success despite that.

The big compromise that gets no credit in this article is mixing elements from different formats and different genres.

Playing knights of the old republic was NOTHING like playing a d20 Star Wars game, even though the core mechanics are near-identical. It's easy to see the six second rounds as coming straight from the sourcebook, but the usability innovations to make a real-time-turn-based RPG should not be taken for granted. Getting that full role-playing experience with a computer DM and then-cutting edge graphics was transformative. I don't know if having that in a social context will be any different with the upcoming TOR, but whenever Bioware cracks the nut of the multiplayer RPG with a computer-driven DM, I will call it innovation.

Additionally, some of my favorite games, and some of the most innovative, have merely mixed elements from existing games. Call of Duty 4 found incredible success by melding RPG progression and FPS multi-player. The "Prestige" system, by which players sacrifice their levels for a mark of distinction, allows new players to jump in, since there will be a range of different levels in every game. This singular innovation allowed the successful introduction of a whole host of RPG mechanics and is the lynchpin that holds the two genres together.

The moral is: innovations can be small, they can be modest, and still create huge ramifications to the play experience. The trick is to create good innovations, ones that affect the game as dramatically as you intend, and in the way you intend.

[...] the Boot has an excellent episode up about innovation in gaming. They use this blog post as a starting point. A lot of interesting points are raised, which I will respond to below. But [...]

http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/1556/

[...] Need a Mutant MMO The Innovation Paradox Thats a Terrible Idea: The Immitation Rut We’re Working Backwards WoW is the iPhone, not [...]

Seed got some buzz for being an MMO without direct combat. (In the world of MMOs, a core design that doesn't focus monomaniacally on encouraging characters to shoot each other in the face counts as innovative.)

It failed almost immediately. It launched early (and missing some features) to try to bring in additional development funding, but still couldn’t last long enough to pay for itself.

How can a champion of innovation in MMOs explain to skeptics why what happened to Seed wouldn’t happen to any MMO that tries to do something meaningfully different?

(Editor's note: I edited this slightly to turn a poorly parsed URL into a proper link.)

[...] Innovation is a double edged sword too, yet many of us cry for it. [...]

[...] them tomorrow) I feel like talking about design once more. Earlier this week I found this gem on Brian “Psychochild” Green blog where he talks about innovation vs polish. [...]