Gaming Gripes

Good evening, loyal reader, and welcome to another video game-related Friday post! While surfing the net a bit earlier I happened upon a forum discussion of video game clichés and one of the posters linked to a page called the Gamer’s Manifesto. It’s a fun article about things that longtime video game players hate to see or would like to see in future games. A lot of it makes a lot of sense, and some points I had thought about many times before.

 

One of the points I had personally mused on before was the lack of ceativity in the video game industry these days. It seems that every game I see my friends play is either the same old first-person shooter or third-person fighter. It’s been a while since a game came along that actually revolutionized the industry by inventing or at least popularizing new concepts.

 

I remember the early days of gaming, where Nintendo Entertainment Systems and home computers were at the cutting edge. Especially in PC games, there was in the late 80s and early 90s an explosion of creativity. Companies like Sierra On-Line were made up of hungry young developers with new ideas who weren’t afraid to take chances even if it meant a game that wouldn’t sell all that well.

 

I believe that a lot of it is due to the fact that video games are now a bona fide billion-dollar industry. Producing a game nowadays is a massive investment of time, money and manpower. Companies producing the games need to make sure they make a profit on their investment and therefore they stick to safe formulas and concentrate on who will have the better graphics. There is not much innovation. You need a team of specialized programmers, artists, animators, video producers and actors to make a game. Back in the day, two or three guys working in a basement space could come up with a fun game out of pure passion. Where is the modern-day Al Lowe? (If you don’t know who that is, I rest my case).

 

I think video games are evolving as movies did and keep doing. Perhaps, as in movies, it all goes in cycles: formula films of the 50s gave way to a cinema Renaissance in the 60s and 70s as the studio system collapsed and young independent filmmakers and entrepreneurs exploded on the scene with boundless energy and creativity, only to cycle back to formula movies for most of the 80s and early 90s until the new rise of independent cinema spearheaded by Tarantino.

 

Perhaps video games will go through the same cycles. Perhaps there will be a movement of young, hungry, furiously creative video game makers in the next few years. One can only hope, loyal reader…