Lack of innovations or something else?

I am active user of Steam Greenlight. I am checking it at least once per week to see what ideas people have. Let me tell you that I “downvote” 90% of stuff. A lot of them are just games already out, they look like flash games, or it is another Minecraft or Slender clone. I am not saying that these types of games are bad, but people should think about what they are going to do before throwing $100 away.

Ocean of Bad Ideas

There are some cases of really good games being on Greenlight, but it’s hard to find them in ocean of really bad ideas. This led me to thinking about innovations in gaming. You already know that the gaming industry is bad place. People yell at you because of everything. And they have their right to do that. In the end it’s all about money. Theirs and yours. Trying to bring something new is risky and it won’t work most of the time. But whose fault is it? Yours because you have bad idea or theirs not understanding? It’s hard to answer but most of the time developers have just really bad ideas.

This is why people are scared to do something new because “it might not work”. That’s why they put their time and money into making another Minecraft clone. I don’t know why, because it won’t be better than Minecraft. The community can do the same as you and better. On the other hand, people are trying to bring something new into voxel style games like guns. People made a lot of gun mods for Minecraft but it just doesn’t feel right. That’s what developers should be focusing on. Making something Minecraft does not have.

People Want Simplicity

As a strategy games fan I am quite disappointed. There are not many new ones. I think it is because people doesn’t have that much time anymore but when I see people playing a game of LoL or Dota 2 for 45 minutes even though they might lose, it’s not that. It’s the complexity. People don’t want complex games anymore. There are some exceptions like Starcraft or maybe even Dota. People say it’s hard to learn how to play Dota but when I compare time it takes to learn how to play Dota to Dwarf Fortress it’s laughable.

In the end, it’s customers that are shaping this industry, not big companies. It’s nice that a lot of people are demanding something more than just simple games, but when they run in the shop and buy another Call of Duty game at day one, it’s not very effective.