What is the game industry but a man with a stutter. He happily talks for hours on end and then you bring up a sensitive topic and he can hardly string a sensible sentence of simple words together. In a vain attempt to regain some dignity the man forces out some words but just ends up making a bigger fool of himself when he repeats the same thing multitudinous times. This is the gaming industry through and through.
For ages games were being produced at a nice rate and there were some nice ideas being toyed around with. Suddenly mass panic erupts. Nobody can think of anything original so big studios just churn out the same old trash repetitively.
Walk into any entertainment or gaming store and you’ll see rows and rows of shelves completely covered in shooting games, driving games, killing games, driving games, shooting games, shooting games and killing games. And they all suck. There was a huge tidal wave of hype building up prior to the release of Modern Warfare 2, but when the sea hits the shore the excitement lasts for but a day.
“There was a huge tidal wave of hype building up over Modern Warfare 2 but when the sea hits the shore the excitement lasts for but a day”
It’s not just unoriginality that’s killing the gaming industry. There are two other spanner-wielding culprits lurking in the works. One of them has been around for a while but the other is just starting to take over. Expensiveness is the first…
Realism is the dangerous one. People seem to think that games which have good graphics are worth something. But where would they be without a good plot and a storyline that can be measured in weeks rather than hours? Overhearing conversations about Modern Warfare 2 during school, it seems to have good graphics. But people finished it after a day. That £40 could have definitely stretched further.
Games where you can do a lot of stuff, roam free, and spend more than a few hours playing them before the end appears, are the successful ones. But it’ll take an individual designer and developer to realise this.
“When the time comers for the gaming market to get a stick of dynamite stuck where the sun don’t shine it’ll be down to a fat guy in a basement”
When the time comes for this corner of the entertainment market to get a stick of dynamite stuck where the sun don’t shine, it probably won’t be a big studio doing it, but a fat guy in a basement. Microsoft and other such developers feed off of business, profit and bucks, while humble individuals actually enjoy the thrill of taking their original ideas, gaining relevant knowledge and then making the concept a reality.
The golden age of gaming was 20 years ago. Then super-duper-pooper-scooper-computers came on the scene, Sony stole a really fast processor, and everything turned into a cock-up. Someone needs to shake up the market soon.
Could that person be you…?
1 comments:
I have to say, that I do think driving games are good for those of us unable to drive.
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