Why do gamers seem to be so afraid or immediately angry at the thought of innovation?

Take for example the new Banjo/Kazooie game. On a recent EGM podcast, one of the staff seemed downright pissed off that it wasn’t a traditional platform game, he ranted and raved about the vehicle building portion of the game. Forum board posters weren’t much nicer about it either. I’ve never played a Banjo/Kazooie game, but from my own experience any game series starts to get stale if the sequels they pump out are cookie cutter copies of their old games. I’d think that putting in a new feature like this that may radically change the gameplay would be a good thing if it’s done well.

Also when details started to leak out about the new Splinter Cell, game forums everywhere were filled with posters frothing at the mouth with how it was changing the mechanics and playstyle of the series and that Ubisoft had doomed the franchise. Yet these are the same people who bitch and moan when game sequels stay the same year after year. Nevermind the fact that nobody had actually played the game yet to see how the new game felt. I’ve heard that the game is supposedly having issues and I’m wondering if Ubisoft went back to the drawing board with the game to make it more in line with the older ones, which I think would be sad if that was the case because it means it would be just like the others in the series. Double Agent may have had problems but I think it was a good step in the right direction, Conviction looked like it was going to improve upon that.

Those two games seemed to be trying something new, unlike the standard Nintendo franchises that come out with every new system that only marginally improve upon the game. Mario Kart seemed to be largely the same, Super Smash Bros. had more annoying characters, Metroid and Zelda were practically identical to their Gamecube predecessors. I can sort of give Zelda a pass because it was originally a Gamecube game, but even that didn’t really change the formula they’ve been using since Ocarina of Time. Only Super Mario Galaxy really seemed to do anything different. But people ate those games up, and nobody really talked about their doubts with the direction Super Mario Galaxy was taking. Is it because Nintendo is critic proof? Or is it because gamers only like innovation in small doses?

I’m starting to think gamers just like being stuck in a rut when it comes to gameplay ideas and just want to find something to protest loudly about. It’s almost like the idea of change scares them.