It's been a tough couple of years for everyone. The global pandemic had people trapped in their houses with little, if anything, to keep them occupied. TV, Streaming services and videogames offered solace to the thousands that needed it.
However, that time has been and gone. We're looking to move forward, and in short the gaming industry needs to too. Yet, over the last year or so Ive found myself, like many others, constantly disappointed by the quality, design, laziness and general indifference of titles from most large gaming development studios and publishers recently. I haven't been excited for a release, outside of the Indy market, for at least 12 months, and that was for Cyberpunk 2077 (que nervous laughter).
This brings me on to my point. In short, the decorum, behaviour and conduct of mainstream gaming, in its current state is absolutely horrific. There're rare exceptions of course, but in general mainstream gaming companies seemingly do not care about building positive relationships with their fanbase. In fact they seem totally blind to the benefits of it. So- No, they don't want to push the medium forward. No, they don't want to come up with original ideas and interesting game mechanics. AND NO! They don't want to to write engaging stories when they could be milking the wallets of parents worldwide... by offering useless loot boxes and pointless early access!
All Aboard ! The Hype Train:
But, how are these unoriginal, repetitive, lowest common denominator games selling at all if they're so bad, Peter ? I hear you ask.
As it turns out all it takes is a good trailer, paid content creators, vague language, a few lies and stomping on the laurels of your previous games or any other popular game for that matter.
We've seen it a million times; a studio releases an amazing trailer that grabs the audiences attention with big explosions, set pieces, cool dialogue and a great soundtrack. The trailer though, often completely glosses over incredible losses in story, mechanics and world building in order to appeal to as many people as possible.
But don't worry because developer droid number 736 said it's all boots on the ground gameplay.
Real gamers are tired of it. As tired as your bloated franchises.
Most of the time it's just sad to see once great, original franchises saturated to the point that they've completely lost their identity. The recent DICE offering for example is a buggy, broken mess more akin to Burnout crossed with Overwatch than a Battlefield game. This one size fits all approach common with some of the bestsellers serves only to alienate previous fans and dilute the market with poor copies of more original titles.
Copy Cat Culture
Times change. More videogames than ever are being released, and trends develop in what's popular and what isn't. This trending seems to be more prominent nowadays than it's ever been, and influences how games are developed, marketed and released.
It seems more companies nowadays are constantly chasing the trends, behind the curve and looking to cash in on what's popular.
The crazy thing is, this is the kicker. Trends start with...OrIgInAl IdEas.
Instead of copying any emergent successes found by often more creative people. The industry bigwigs need to be more willing to stray from what happens to be selling. Its such a short sighted and poisonous approach to the medium. I understand companies need to make money but in the long run it would pay endlessly to allow the overlooked, incredibly passionate and creative people that often work for them to make the games they actually want.
As opposed to investors and board members looking to make a quick cash grab hamstringing the creativity buy concerning themselves with what is popular that week. Independent studios are the only thing pushing the industry forward.
Greed removes all art from games. In a lot of cases it's already too late.
The Failed State
The release of a game used to be the day when you were super excited. You couldn't wait to go to the shop, buy it and slide the disc in and have fun. Nowadays you seem to either launch into a buggy and janky mess or you need to wait three months for a developer to get their act together and patch it. It's this push it out and fix it later mentality that has myself and many others reluctant to buy games by the bigger studios these days.
You could also be a huge fan of a particular franchise who's been waiting for a new entry for almost a decade but the studio keep announcing remakes of games from a better time, when creativity was an actual priority.
Rockstar and Bethesda have made millions form releasing the same game for almost a combined tenure of 20 years. Innovative games that are ready to be played upon release are becoming rarer.
Find the good games! Don't buy the other stuff.
