Innovation in the Video Games Industry... does it exist?

In one of my fourth year modules, "Games Professional Awareness", we've been discussing innovation in the games industry, what it is, where it's most prominent etc and I've been forced to conclude that innovation isn't half of what we think it is...


We heard a Guardian writer suggest that games reviewers don't know what innovation is (Stuart, K, "Do game reviewers really understand innovation?", 2008) and I don't think he's wrong, in fact, I'd take it one step further, I'm not convinced developers know what innovation is, not where it matters anyway.

However it's not all our fault, we're at the front of one of the fastest changing, fastest growing industries out there.  Lets compare ourselves with some of the other creative industries, Film really became big in 1895 - that's 117 years ago - music? earlier still.  Meanwhile, games hit their stride just over 40 years ago and in that we've been from arcades to 8-bit consoles, to full blown, 3D games at home, to full blown, 3D games in your pocket. Consumers of games have changed from the geeks of society to... everyone. Even as far back as 2004 we were more profitable than cinema and CD sales (Otobe, I, "Innovations in the Video Game Industry", 2007), so perhaps it's a little understandable that we're confused about where to go next.

It does show however, if we look at VentureBeat's "Best Innovations in the Video Game Industry" from E3 2010. So what were they? 3D, Motion Controls, Game Engines, Depth Analysis (LA Noire), Motion Control (again), a slimmer Xbox and you guessed it... 3D again.  Now we'll take game engines out for a second - is innovation the first word that pops into your haed when thinking of 3D, Motion Control, Depth Analysis and slimmer... anything. I don't think so, I think the word you're looking for is gimmicks - expensive doo-dags from an industry that doesn't know where it's giong but will spend millions on what it calls innovation - just to write it on the box. If we don't know what the future looks like, how can any journalist?

There is one shining light though, maybe it's just because I'm a programmer but I look at the engine on that list and I see our innovation because what we do with our code does become the future and not just for our industry, hell, who knows maybe we'll bring about a whole new industry. If we can remain dedicated to squeezing every last bit of juice out of the technology we work with, if we can make increasingly complex code run in real-time. just imagine the impact our coding innovation may have on trying to get rooms full of supercomputers to run an even more complex medical simulation. So my favourite example of innovation where it counts? Folding@Home - a PS3 application that didn't require any interaction, it just folded protein strands... for science!