Jim Sterling posted an interesting video this morning exploring the ongoing obsession of major games studios with trying to find the perfect video game and how they’re on a hiding to nothing. He cites market research conducted by the food industry in which two rival companies tried to find the perfect pasta sauce. To cut a long story short it turns out there was no universally favoured product and a third of those polled actually wanted a type of pasta sauce that wasn’t even available. The conclusion of this analysis was that success was dependent on offering a broad range of products. To quote Mr. Sterling, “there is no perfect pasta sauce, just perfect pasta sauces”. Let it suffice to say this anecdotes parallels with the gaming industry are obvious. Games perpetuate features that work, which end up being adopted by other rival products. This leads to a lack of innovation and constrained creativity.