Society of RPG Friends / Discuss the Future

Originally Posted by Gorath
Innovation is overvalued.

That seems like good business sense in a Warren Buffett kind of way.

But Warren Buffett isn't a high technology guy, either. He's old school. His mindset is one where if someone's going to gain market share, then someone else has to lose market share.

The cool thing about innovation is that, if you truly innovate, you're in the position of facing no competition. You're the only one providing your particular product or service. So you gain market share without having to take it away from anyone else.

That makes innovation a special thing.

That's why I would encourage indie's to innovate. If the game they create is truly different and great, they can blaze a new trail and achieve success that way.

You're assuming that innovation somehow increases the overall size of the market. I'm not sure you can support that assumption. The only way you increase the number of gamers is by drawing someone away from a book/movie/TV and getting them to purchase a game when they had no purchases planned. I'm saying that's going to be VERY rare (Myst and Doom are the only ones that really come to mind), and most likely not going to be in the hardcore RPG genre anyway. A new game that simply excites existing gamers is a market share change.

Squeek,

I was talking about innovation in the game industry. Innovative games are much more risky than proven formulas. I don´t even remember the last innovative game which was a huge success.

You have to factor in the opportunity costs. A publisher could use a certain budget either to fund an innovative product, which includes a high risk, or invest into a routine game with proven sales potential.



Innovation in general can be good or bad for a company. The question is whether or not they can make use of their first mover advantage. They can be happy if they can take over a market before the competition can enter it. But sometimes that´s not so easy and the competitors can lean back and observe how the first mover educates the market. Then they enter it energetically with a similar product.

Originally Posted by Gorath
Innovation in general can be good or bad for a company. The question is whether or not they can make use of their first mover advantage. They can be happy if they can take over a market before the competition can enter it. But sometimes that´s not so easy and the competitors can lean back and observe how the first mover educates the market. Then they enter it energetically with a similar product.

I don't know about games, but in music it's usually not the first to use a new "sound" who makes it big, it's the second who does.

Übereil