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[Reelya]

The most likely reason for that is that a newly launched game today has to compete against all those games that accrued new content over many years. In other words, simpler games were the norm some years ago, but those games kept piling random stuff on to try and retain players. Eventually, those big random piles of stuff became the expected industry standard, so new studios trying to compete modeled their new games on those mature-monstrosities rather than analyze the actual process that got them there.

And this is where breaking genre can be really profitable. Trying to make a new example of a clusterfucked genre is only marginally profitable since you're trying to skim off some users from bigger and better known games. (sure some will succeed at that, but most game launches fail). However, by redefining the genre you can go back to a simpler game design, yet still bring over a lot of players who are bored with the regular ones.

[Mephisto]

Speaking of the landfill strategy, I've been playing quite a bit of Questland lately. You're in a land. You do quests. You gain materials for the crafting/upgrading system. You level up. You upgrade your gear. The devs are very active and seem to be pretty good people.

There are a few types of currency:
money, gained through fighting and the bank; used to upgrade equipment and orbs (which can be attached to equipment; equipment has three orb slots, one for health, attack, and defense)
eternium, gained through fighting and converting excess equipment in the forge; used to upgrade equipment
gems, the premium currency; also gained through many other ways - a small handful through your daily quest completion, spinning on one of the many wheels, and probably a few others; used for expediting trade missions, speeding up your bulk quest thing, buying things from the gem shop, and buying spare uses of the various wheels/random draw functions; I never run out and have accumulated nearly 9k.
guild coinage, gained when donating to your guild; used to buy goodies from the guild shop

honor, barrels, stamps, who the fuck knows what else - currency gained through fighting in the shared quest, trade missions, the arena, and <insert everything else here>; all are used to buy neat things

Back to the landfill strategy thing I mentioned - yes, there are lots of resource types. I don't think you can directly buy any of them besides gems (and even then, I'm pretty sure you can only buy money and eternium (and donate to receive guild money) with them).

I mentioned donating to the guild. You can donate money (easy to get; my bank is giving me a few hundred k a day at this point and the daily guild donation is 50k) for a few goodies and/or gems (50) for a few more goodies. Once enough has been donated, the guild levels up and you can start throwing money into guild-level attack/defense/health bonuses.

As part of one of the intro quests I did a month or two ago, I joined a guild. The guildmaster left and it decided I should be next in line. So now I own a guild. If any DF peeps want to play and get to the level where you can enter a guild, let me know.

Spoiler: dev stories (click to show/hide)

I was having fun so I threw $.99 at one of the promotional deals. My purchase didn't go through so I sent an email through the game. The guy on the other end was apologetic and immediately applied my purchase. This was a while ago; they have since fixed the issue.

I noticed a news entry one day. In summary, "This chest is broken; it gives more legendary equipment than it should. To be fair to the people who haven't exploited this, we're leaving it as is. Sorry for the inconvenience."

I received a mass mail from the devs. In summary, "This key is supposed to have a chance to give legendary equipment but we munged the numbers. Here are some free keys to make up for it now that it's fixed." I had not, in fact, purchased or used any at that point.

There's also a divine and busty questgiver lady that you meet at certain points. It's kind of funny - I think she was deliberately designed this way to mock Evony and related ilk.

[tnc]

It's unbelievable how developers can keep making generic pocket games, from name to graphics to gameplay. You would think they would fail to make one aspect of it generic at least. These guys, they know what they're doing.

[Folly]

And this is where breaking genre can be really profitable. Trying to make a new example of a clusterfucked genre is only marginally profitable since you're trying to skim off some users from bigger and better known games. (sure some will succeed at that, but most game launches fail). However, by redefining the genre you can go back to a simpler game design, yet still bring over a lot of players who are bored with the regular ones.

Can you cite sources on this claim? Because I've been watching the gaming industry from all angles for decades, and every single game I can think of that has tried to redefine a genre has failed miserably. And there's good reason for that. The basic formula for an entertaining game is not that complicated, and altering it without knowing what you're doing is like substituting random ingredients in a cooking recipe; it usually turns out pretty gross.

The most successful games are those that stick to tried and true formulas, but slap a fresh aesthetic theme on it, and balance the gameplay elements more effectively than predecessors did. That's all a good game needs.

[Parsely]

What Folly said, there's a reason people all do the same thing and that's because it works.

[sambojin]

It depends on what Reelya means.

Nethack->Diablo->Neverwinter Nights->Path of Exile?

All basic RPGs, all with their own spin that "redefined" the genre, even though it was certainly incremental in the changes. All made a good whack of money too (well, except Nethack) .

"Give it heaps of content, make it quirky, make it free. Procedurally generate the levels"
"Make it action'y, up the production values and UI"
"What if people could make their own adventures? Ditch the procedural generation, script it. Slap a license in it, 3d it"
"Let's go back to free. More content, better 3d too thanks. Back to procedural generation. That worked fine."

They're all certainly different enough from each other that they "redefined" that sort of game, but in many ways are kind of similar. Yes, even just adding heaps of systems and using a different business model can be redefining enough, as PoE was from D1/D2.

They all stood out from a pack of clones, even though there is a fairly loose lineage between them all (and of the clones that failed). Was it just because they were first ones released in their time bracket? Not really. They weren't. They were just the first really memorable ones of their own eras. Even D3 (which did make money, and was backed by a big company) came off as feeling rushed and shallow and clone'y at its release. And this was even while PoE was trying to be clone'y, just done really well in the D1-D2 lineage. Other lineages and systems sprouted from these games as well.

[Reelya]

Yeah, it's just not true that everyone just clones what came before. People do redefine genres, and it lets you break out of the feature-creep cycle.

Take RTS as a big example. Trying to make bigger and better RTS's with more features, more factions, more units was a losing game. By the end, the only way to make a viable new RTS was to slap a licensing agreement such as Warhammer on it. Similarly with FPS. You can't just make a "tried and true" 1990s shooter now, you have to come up with some new formula to even get a foot in the door, unless you slap a movie / comic-book tie-in on it, or it's a nostalgia thing.

So, instead of new RTSs - the "tried and true formula" - people came up with Tower Defense on one hand, and MOBAs on the other hand. Both are derivative of RTS, however they are both very different things, and proof that people don't always just repeat what happened before because it "just works".

Formulas work for a while until they completely stop working. That's why the big popular genres now are not what people were playing even 10 years ago. Remember, Battle Royale is new, Candy Crush came out only in 2012, and back then Farmville was the "tried and true" formula, and where are all the Farmville clones at the moment?

For example, you have almost zero% chance making a WoW-killer. It would have to out-do WoW so thoroughly that you'd go broke making it, and many have indeed gone broke making WoW clones. Sticking to the "tried and true formulas" of WoW didn't work. Similarly, you're not going to rise up and dethrone GTA - or The Sims for that matter. The new GTA games work because they've got the money and the GTA name behind them. WoW, The Sims, and GTA are more like super-profitable niches with room for exactly one company than a formula you could copy.

So the big new things aren't wow-killers or GTA-beaters, they're currently Battle Royale games. If "The most successful games are those that stick to tried and true formulas" was always true then Fortnite wouldn't be the big new thing.

[Aoi]

Formulas work for a while until they completely stop working. That's why the big popular genres now are not what people were playing even 10 years ago. Remember, Battle Royale is new, Candy Crush came out only in 2012, and back then Farmville was the "tried and true" formula, and where are all the Farmville clones at the moment?

I was curious about this specific point so I ran a random search and came up with a Telegraph list of top games in 2008. Looking only at the top 10...
10. Professor Layton - Puzzle compendiums. Sure, they're still around. They vary from minimalistic (Brain Age) to wrapped in esoteric lore (Myst) and cover a huge gamut. I'd say they pretty solidly share room with Artifex Mundi, which does it fairly well. (But I'll take more Layton.)
9. Left 4 Dead - I'm pretty sure this genre, and subgenre, is alive and well, though FPS/TPS gives me migraines so I don't track them at all.
8. No More Heroes - The evolution of the beat 'em up (though this has distinct flair... kind of reminds me of Deadpool). God of War's recent release seemed to do okay.
7. GTA IV - Action adventure? I've heard that new Mario game referred to as GTA Mario...
6. Spore - Okay, this one was weird to begin with.
5. Gears of War 2 - See 9.
4. Rock Band 2 - Not anymore, really. This has pretty much devolved back into rhythm games, except on mobile.
3. Little Big Planet - Platformer with heavy user content creation elements, I think? Lots of stuff emphasizing playing through other people's creations, but not much in platformers, far as I know.
2. Fallout 3 - Didn't Skyrim just get a VR rerelease? Which, really, FO3 and TES are preeeetty similar, just in a different setting.
1. Fable II - Action adventure, albeit with a more moralistic stance.

...In hindsight, I feel like I grabbed a critic's list, and not bestseller, but I'm tired.

[Reelya]

Things like FPS are too broad a definition here if the argument is that new games almost always use "tried and tested formulas". Formulas are more than just something like FPS. That would imply that Just Cause, Quake 4, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Fortnite are all the same basic thing, which I'd argue is not the case.

Also, major franchise stuff that's still in the same genre as their direct predecessors don't really count. Also, making a shooter that's built around a game concept similar to an Elder Scrolls: how is that not redefining what you can do in a shooter. Take the original Deus Ex as another example. That does a huge amount of stuff that shooters didn't do before it.

Can you cite sources on this claim? Because I've been watching the gaming industry from all angles for decades, and every single game I can think of that has tried to redefine a genre has failed miserably

... the fact that we have lots of stuff now that we clearly didn't have before? Where did MOBAs and Tower Defense come from if not from redefining the RTS genre? Note what I said about a redefinition of a genre being an opportunity to scale-down and simplify your design. MOBAs and Tower Defense both do that, by taking elements of RTS and changing the game's focus to zoom in on those elements. Tower Defense takes the base building / base defense aspect of a typical RTS and focuses on that completely, whereas a MOBA takes the hero unit and enemy base destruction goal, gives you control of exactly one unit per player, adds a team element, while removing / simplifying-away all the stuff about controlling units and base building.

The massive popularity of Battle Royale shooters is another one.

[Aoi]

Runic Rampage is available on Android for free right now, and, after a few rounds, does not appear to be inundated with ads or IAP.

It's a pretty stock beat 'em up, but it looks pretty good, and there's something satisfying about smashing things with a hammer as big as you are. Not sure how grindy it'll be later on though... I suspect 'not very', since grind tends to be more prevalent if it's part of their monetization. You'll want to dodge attacks, or the stage bosses are liable to crush you.

[tnc]

Nethack->Diablo->Neverwinter Nights->Path of Exile?

I don't get it, does anyone think that Nethack influenced Diablo, or any roguelike influenced an rpg or vice versa?

[Ziusudra]

I don't get it, does anyone think that Nethack influenced Diablo, or any roguelike influenced an rpg or vice versa?

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Diablo

The designers of Diablo admitted in an interview that they were inspired by NetHack.

However there's no citation.

E: https://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/behind-the-scenes-of-diablo/

“The design morphed over the years and really was heavily influenced by a bunch of UNIX games that I was playing in college, roguelike games: like Rogue, Angband, Moria, Nethack

[tnc]

I don't get it, does anyone think that Nethack influenced Diablo, or any roguelike influenced an rpg or vice versa?

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Diablo

Oooh, thank you. I always didn't like that Diablo was real time, never knew it was considered to be turn based in the first place. But then what's the point of Diablo if it were turn based?

[Frumple]

Ask thineself? Real time or not it's still a rpg/dungeon crawler, and those can be plenty enjoyable.

[Reelya]

I don't get it, does anyone think that Nethack influenced Diablo, or any roguelike influenced an rpg or vice versa?

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Diablo

Oooh, thank you. I always didn't like that Diablo was real time, never knew it was considered to be turn based in the first place. But then what's the point of Diablo if it were turn based?

The point would be to make a commercially-viable, graphical and animated Nethack/Moria clone. Being turned-based and being nice to look at aren't incompatible. There were isometric front-ends for Nethack already. However, when the Diablo devs decided to remove the turned-based timing then they ended up with a new genre of action-RPG.

Interestingly enough, if you boot up Diablo I, or look up videos, you'll notice that your character and all enemies only ever move on an 8-directional grid. This was a holdover from the turn-based development. The core gameplay wouldn't be that hard to imagine being turn-based, since Diablo I movement is in fact tile-based movement. Only with Diablo II do you start moving off the grid.

Another thing is that the world in Diablo I is very similar to the roguelike Moria. You have a town level with shops and a dungeon that goes down within the town.