Feature: 'Is Crawford Right?'

Responding to the Question Of The Week on Chris Crawford's eye-opening rhetoric condemning game innovation, professionals from Obsidian, Harmonix, Crystal Dynamics and more talk back in today's main Gamasutra feature. Among many valuable responses, NetDevil's Adam Maxwell suggests: "I respect Chris Crawford. I admire the work he's doing on Storytronics a great deal, but is innovation dead? I don't know about that. Part of me wants to agree, militantly, but part of me disagrees to the same amount. The risk-averse atmosphere of our publishers is certainly killing our success and the lack of original titles is making the market bored, but is innovation really dead? No." In addition, Amaze's Robert Martin counters: "To say that games today are mere rehashes flies in the face of the very history of innovation, which has always been about synthesis of new ideas from the ashes of the old. I think if anything, we have simply developed an impatience for continuing innovation in healthy steps, a knee-jerk reaction to short-term trends, and an inability to detect innovation when it actually exists. I can tell you from the trenches that, due to competition and community, innovation is alive and well today." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject for more, including plenty of other unmissable responses (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).