Calin said:
engineering something outside the traditional game development pipeline

What do you understand under a “traditional” game-dev pipeline?

There already exists “indie” developers professionall or “hobbyists” otherwise that produce games with all different angles and approaches, unlike the more “traditional” AAA-studios.

Calin said:
@julien alternative is when you branch-off somewhere underneath the current state on technological evolution on the technology evolution tree

Can you give a more concrete example of whtats on your mind? Put like that, it makes no sense. Gamedev is a broad field in both graphics, gameplay, technology. People enroll their own technology on a daily basis. Every AAA-gamestudio has their own engine, ever second person in this forum has made some attempt at their own game system. Is there something else that you could “branch-off” on, other than literally innovating your own game & tech?

Calin said:
in game play things haven`t changed since unreal tournament original , counterstrike etc.

Then perhaps you just don't know enough games? Or only AAA-ones? Thats why I was throwing in Indie-Developers into the mix right aways and seems I was spot on. While big game companies like Epic Games certainly are not great gameplay innovators most of the time, there are hundreds of thousands of indie games with unique gameplay mechanics.

Calin said:
just look at Starcraft 2 or better warcraft 3 reloaded

Yes? That are two out of 100000 games, and notably by one of the largest and greediest AAA-publisher right now. Again, go look at indie-games. right now you are just cherry-picking games that match your point instead of looking at the larger picture. If you ignore all the innovative games and just look the non-innovative games, of course in your mind there is not going to be any innovation. Yet there is.