The analogy of mutations and species I think is really good. The best games aren't just made, they are evolved. The best games are often built by teams leveragi

The analogy of mutations and species I think is really good. The best games aren't just made, they are evolved. The best games are often built by teams leveraging past experience, and probably also extending the technology they built previously to support newer features. It's probably while sequels and series are so prevalent in games. It's often much better to evolve past work than to create stuff from scratch. I think this is why Anthem fell flat. The team was making something they've never done before, a genuinely open-world looter-shooter, using tech they hadn't mastered (Frostbite engine). While there are stories of teams launching great games in genres they've never touched (e.g. Minecraft, GoldenEye 007) such endeavors probably fail more often than they succeed.