It’s a perpetual challenge in video games or any type of commercial art: Do you give audiences what they’ve responded to in the past, or do you try to offer them something new? Each road presents potential challenges. With the former, creators risk drowning their audiences in clones of a familiar product. With the latter, getting consumer buy-in is a greater challenge, as is building everything from scratch. One developer in the early ‘90s risked everything for the sake of trying something new.
