The State Of Modern Gaming

The following is a re-post of a Guest Article I wrote for addictedtogaming last week:

Further to my recent article on loadscreen.net concerning the Death of Real Gaming, I’d like to take this guest posting opportunity to explore something that is very close to my own, and hopefully my readers, hearts: The State of Modern Gaming.

Recap:

In recent years, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, gaming has enjoyed (or suffered, depending on your point of view) a huge popularity explosion leading to a proliferation of watered down quasi-games that barely  deserve mentioning in the same media category as classics such as Deus Ex, Half Life, Goldeneye, Mario 64, Zelda: OOT and many, many others. This is clearly bad for the art form, and only serves to pander to the tabloid media’s view of gaming as something that corrupts the soul and twists young minds in to performing acts of extreme violence. There has been enough written on that subject to sink a battleship so I will not open the Pandora’s box of gaming violence or the amount of pure tripe that is currently assaulting the gaming market (at least not in this article…).

On the other side, many of you will realize that the proliferation of modern gaming and its meteoric rise in sales and popularity has given rise to another, more powerful animal: The Blockbuster game. You know what I’m talking about; those games that have been wrung through the hype machine so many times that they almost cease to exist as a game and transcend in to the realm of entertainment franchise. Games such as MW2, UC2, the eponymous Halo series, these are not mere games, no, they are media giants branching out in to film, music, internet and getting their sticky fingers in to so many pies that you cant avoid knowing about them.

This fact is known of course, the Blockbusters have been around for ages, but is it good for gaming?

Analysis

Consider this: the recent juggernaut FPS, Modern Warefare 2, was recently reported as having grossed over one billion dollars with sales figures in excess of 15 million units. So, more people buying games = more money in gaming = better games for gamers, right? Wrong. At least in my opinion. For me, modern gaming has become more about churning out more of the same carbon copy games that about forwarding the development of the medium. Games such as MW2 and Halo become so huge that the spawn whole ecosystems of copycat games around them with small games publishers trying to cash in on the popularity of the blockbusters with quick, dirty builds of games that bare a resemblance to the real deal. Parents at Christmas and birthdays don’t know the difference and before you know it kids hopeful for their next dose of Modern Warfare end up with a copy of Rogue Warrior (lasting appeal 1/10 !!!).

The Blockbusters themselves are almost invariably excellent, even if they do lack a certain innovation factor, and are known for delivering a level of shine and polish that makes other games seems amateurish in comparison, so I don’t have too many complaints there. However the effect that they have on the industry is in my opinion pretty devastating; the amount of terrible games plopping out of the dark unplumbed depths of the bottom of the gaming industry is frankly appalling. It all comes back to something I’ve mentioned before: the greed factor. The ratio of devoted games developers with a passion for their work to greedy corporate publisher drones is quickly diminishing and I fear soon all we will have left is a huge creativity vacuum where the same content and ideas a rehashed just enough to provide the ever hungry gaming masses with something new to satiate their lust.

Conclusion

Although the situation seems good at the moment, with new IPO’s such as Heavy Rain pushing the boundaries of gaming, I think that within the next year or two we may begin to see a steadily diminishing quality in the games that make up the large majority of the market. That being said, the state of modern gaming is currently very healthy, I wonder what the future holds?

Comments appreciated.