Former Gears of War Creative Director: People Don’t Want Innovation

The gaming market is caught in a schizophrenic struggle between trying to move forward and innovate, and sticking to the safe, established routes to success as laid down by what came before. Even as audiences cry for innovation and inventiveness, they do cry each time something comes up that is too different from the norm. This is because, according to former creative director on Gears of War, Adrien Chmielarz, people don’t actually want innovation.

“I don’t know if my version was better. It was just different. People say they want innovation, but what they often really want is the same, just with a fresh wrapper. So maybe Epic was right to change Judgment to be more likes Gears 3.5. Who Knows?” he said, speaking of his vision for boss battles in Gears of War: Judgement, which was ultimately supposed to be far different from what we got in an interview with OXM.

Personally? I think he is right to a very large extent, though I also think it is not as simple or binary as he is making it out to be- while people don’t always want to venture out of their comfort zones, there is more to this than simply them not wanting innovation. If they did not want innovation, why did disruptive products like Wii, DS, or 3DS succeed?