Has Gaming...Gotten Lazy?
I realize I get a little nostalgic on JiH, sometimes. And sometimes I go on these long rants about how much better things used to be.
...Not apologizing for that, so don't get excited. Its my site and I get to do that. However, I do want to say that's NOT what I'm doing this time, since I'm about to pose a rather important question:
Has gaming gotten lazy?
Understand that I'm an avid gamer, and I'm the first one to roll my eyes when gamers bitch and moan about a sequel to a good game coming out. Bitching that does not stop even though the sequel's good. As far as I'm concerned, a good game is a good game--be happy you got another one to feed your addiction.
That having been said...does anyone else feel like they could be doing more, with gaming? In this cynical culture, I guess asking that would net me (or whoever asked it) an instant yes or "of course", but hold on a sec.
To go a little deeper, are WE to blame for that? What I mean is, the life cycle for a videogame console is anywhere from five to seven years. That seems like a "long" time, and I guess it SORT OF is, but good games often take two years or so to come out. That's anywhere from one-third to one-half to a console's life cycle.
Viewing it like that, it seems kind of easy for developers to just hand us the same old same old stuff from PS1 to PS2 to PS3. I mean, since games have entered the mainstream culture of the world, what do we get, really? The yearly sports games, sequels to some good action games, GTA knock-offs, a few Square-Enix RPGs with some pretty boys everyone mistakes for girls, and some lackluster fantasy RPGs. And a LOT of freaking FPS games.
But who's really pushing the limits of what these systems can do? Or even pushing the limits of where you can go and what you can do with different genres?
Everybody's losing their shit over the next Gears of War, meanwhile games like Faith and a .45 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_a_.45), third person shooting games that take place in environments we really haven't gotten a chance to see very often, like the mid-west during the Great Depression, get forgotten about.
We as gamers are letting developers get lazy. All we see is fantasy, dystopian future, WW2, desert combat settings. And they can get by doing that because all they have to do is drop sports games every year, drop sequels to proven sucesses every 2-3 years, drop a few Western and J-RPGs that are generally nothing special, and that's that.
This is not to say I'm not excited about some games--I definitely am--I'm just wondering why aren't we doing more? Like BioWare's Jade Empire--an RPG set in a mythical version of ancient China. That was something new--we don't get to see games like that very often.
Alpha Protocol too. Not my sort of game, but its an action RPG where you get to play a spy. We need games like that.
We can even do work with genres we've seen before. So long as they elevate the genre a bit. Where's the open-ended fantasy game that...actually looks INTERESTING? Every game I hear about, the selling point is that its linear, but they never tell you what you're actually DOING in it.
I'd love a space faring RPG (think Rogue Galaxy) where you got to visit at least a dozen different planets. Or a fantasy RPG where more goes on than you saving the world. Maybe the game world also has you quell strife between warring races independent of the main task. Maybe recruiting an elven character is REALLY difficult because he doesn't like hybrids, and you're half-human. We have to stop being content with letting them skate by with the same old games that are either cash grabs, failures, or good but still not all that different from other games out already.
That's another problem these days. The cost of games is going up all the time, and yet for some reason the playtime seems to be dropping. A lot of games these days give you 10-12 hours and people act like that's fine. How is this NOT a waste of your money? The amount of work that goes into them--the money you pay for them--no game should be shorter than 20-25 hours, and RPGs...sure, you should be able to finish the CRUCIAL things in 30-40 hours, but I'd have no complaints if beating everything in the game (like, every single thing) took upwards of 300 hours.
I don't want to drone on when I think people get my point, I'm just saying...could we give a little more thought, be a little more creative in terms of genres and settings we explore in gaming? Can we be a little more creative in terms of how we push a game's processor aside from making the graphics pretty? (I'll detail this more as I do more This Should Really Be A Game columns.)
...Not apologizing for that, so don't get excited. Its my site and I get to do that. However, I do want to say that's NOT what I'm doing this time, since I'm about to pose a rather important question:
Has gaming gotten lazy?
Understand that I'm an avid gamer, and I'm the first one to roll my eyes when gamers bitch and moan about a sequel to a good game coming out. Bitching that does not stop even though the sequel's good. As far as I'm concerned, a good game is a good game--be happy you got another one to feed your addiction.
That having been said...does anyone else feel like they could be doing more, with gaming? In this cynical culture, I guess asking that would net me (or whoever asked it) an instant yes or "of course", but hold on a sec.
To go a little deeper, are WE to blame for that? What I mean is, the life cycle for a videogame console is anywhere from five to seven years. That seems like a "long" time, and I guess it SORT OF is, but good games often take two years or so to come out. That's anywhere from one-third to one-half to a console's life cycle.
Viewing it like that, it seems kind of easy for developers to just hand us the same old same old stuff from PS1 to PS2 to PS3. I mean, since games have entered the mainstream culture of the world, what do we get, really? The yearly sports games, sequels to some good action games, GTA knock-offs, a few Square-Enix RPGs with some pretty boys everyone mistakes for girls, and some lackluster fantasy RPGs. And a LOT of freaking FPS games.
But who's really pushing the limits of what these systems can do? Or even pushing the limits of where you can go and what you can do with different genres?
Everybody's losing their shit over the next Gears of War, meanwhile games like Faith and a .45 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_a_.45), third person shooting games that take place in environments we really haven't gotten a chance to see very often, like the mid-west during the Great Depression, get forgotten about.
We as gamers are letting developers get lazy. All we see is fantasy, dystopian future, WW2, desert combat settings. And they can get by doing that because all they have to do is drop sports games every year, drop sequels to proven sucesses every 2-3 years, drop a few Western and J-RPGs that are generally nothing special, and that's that.
This is not to say I'm not excited about some games--I definitely am--I'm just wondering why aren't we doing more? Like BioWare's Jade Empire--an RPG set in a mythical version of ancient China. That was something new--we don't get to see games like that very often.
Alpha Protocol too. Not my sort of game, but its an action RPG where you get to play a spy. We need games like that.
We can even do work with genres we've seen before. So long as they elevate the genre a bit. Where's the open-ended fantasy game that...actually looks INTERESTING? Every game I hear about, the selling point is that its linear, but they never tell you what you're actually DOING in it.
I'd love a space faring RPG (think Rogue Galaxy) where you got to visit at least a dozen different planets. Or a fantasy RPG where more goes on than you saving the world. Maybe the game world also has you quell strife between warring races independent of the main task. Maybe recruiting an elven character is REALLY difficult because he doesn't like hybrids, and you're half-human. We have to stop being content with letting them skate by with the same old games that are either cash grabs, failures, or good but still not all that different from other games out already.
That's another problem these days. The cost of games is going up all the time, and yet for some reason the playtime seems to be dropping. A lot of games these days give you 10-12 hours and people act like that's fine. How is this NOT a waste of your money? The amount of work that goes into them--the money you pay for them--no game should be shorter than 20-25 hours, and RPGs...sure, you should be able to finish the CRUCIAL things in 30-40 hours, but I'd have no complaints if beating everything in the game (like, every single thing) took upwards of 300 hours.
I don't want to drone on when I think people get my point, I'm just saying...could we give a little more thought, be a little more creative in terms of genres and settings we explore in gaming? Can we be a little more creative in terms of how we push a game's processor aside from making the graphics pretty? (I'll detail this more as I do more This Should Really Be A Game columns.)
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