From the mouths of babes…

August 18, 2006 on 7:11 pm | In Innovation, Industry

While discussing the viability of Genesis, some have wondered about whether the guy behind the concept has actually not ever played an MMORPG as he has claimed. To some, having played these games is a rite of passage to designing them.

I don't agree.

You don't need to have played these games to understand how to deliver an analogous experience to some players. Knowing what's not worked previously can potentially close a mind to what could work now. Ideas are about timing too and sometimes a good idea can come from anywhere.

MMORPGs themselves borrow conventions from many other genres that themselves haven't stood still either. WoW questing, for example is not some new and wonderful thing never seen before. The mass compulsion to partake is part of a self-fulfilling prophecy based on repeatedly-discussed success. But otherwise, it's the game anyone who's ever played an RPG has already played. Until the endgame. But even that is just about more people realizing a nascent desire to spend craploads of time doing the same thing again and again rather than there being some fundamentally new experience to be had there that's never been before.

I don't think you need to have played these games since the days of The Realm in order to design games for both current and new players. In fact, a large part of the relatively slow growth this genre was enjoying before Final Fantasy XI to World of Warcraft to Guild Wars could be attributed to veterans of the genre designing for veteran sensibilities. Not a good way to capture the new user.

The most successful titles in the genre (either by how well they scale to the business behind them, or how they capture zillions of people) were from companies coming from the outside with new rules. This is often the cornerstone of the Blue Ocean Strategy, the essence of "thinking outside the box", the tried-and-true tradition of ignoring rules other think are static.

I do not know whether Genesis is the product of a kid looking for a job or has a real prayer of seeing the light of day. But there's a long history of innovation starting just this way.