The Essence of Gaming..

As the 21th century opened, game design choices were ambitious. Nobody knew at which direction gaming would head next. A lot of very inspired games came along, with very stylish controls and design choices. But stylish so that they could earn more money, or grab stock-holder attention, they were stylish simply for gaming excellence, and that was all that mattered. Then EA showed up, and Microsoft, and they took gaming a step backwards.. Gamers split into two camps - "hardcores" who steriotypically play shooters and fast-paced action games on their Xbox's and PS3's, and "casuals", who play downbeat games on their Wii's. All gaming companies have in mind these days is to satisfy those two groups, get them to buy their stuff. They don't care about excellence.

When was the last time a pure, fully-lived-up-to-its-potential piece came out since 2002? Since Metroid Prime 1, to be specific? Never.

Even a game like Zelda could be ten times what it is. Skate 2 could drop the "sports game" title in favor of "skateboarding simulation". All those war-related games like Battlefield and Killzone 2 could be good on a whole different level if a storyline writer said so. But he didn't care about excellence, he only cared about getting paid.

EA's been around a lot longer than the past nine years. Before they became the company they are now, an EA game sometimes meant quality -the Strike series for example while there are still those who swear by the Road Rash games. Not always, but at times you would come across a great EA game. Microsoft joined in in order to get a piece of the action.

These days it's all about big profits, short games, great graphics, games that are usually the same thing as one another in order to appeal to the younger generations who tend to have very short attention spans and instant action over patience.
Gaming is about having fun, great gameplay and knowing that when you replay the game, you'll always have fun, is what matters and that's something that tends to be disappearing. Profits first, quality last tends to be the by word these days.

R/T

I think the problem is that -by the end of the 5th generation- gaming sharply diverted away from an art form into a mass media, revenue generating wide-appeal industry. That actually hurts the quality of the products, & that's way more significant when knowing that the capacities of modern videogame hardware & physical media would allow for really fantastic creations (if they were aimed at being at least as great as the gaming past).

There's a lot of doom and gloom on this forum today, with people pining for some lost golden age of gaming. Naturally, different people have widely varying ideas on what exactly constituted this Lost Age of Gaming, but they can all agree that games today suck. You know, there have got to be plenty of old games from "back in the day" (whatever that means to you) that you never got around to playing. Why don't you look them up?

Gamers split into two camps - "hardcores" who stetiotypcly play shooter and fast-paced games on their Xbox's and PS3's, and "casuals", who play downbeat games on they Wii's. All gaming companies have in mind these days is to satisfy those two groups, get them to buy their stuff.

Mikethechimp

With titles like Europa Universalis. (Sarcasm)

They don't care about excellence.

Mikethechimp

I think a number of people involved in the gaming industry would disagree with that.

When was the last time a pure, fully-lived-up-to-its-potential piece came out since 2002? Since Metroid Prime 1, to be specific? Never.

Mikethechimp

That's right because games like BioShock, Mass Effect, KotOR (series), Empire: Total War and others aren't very good.

[QUOTE="Mikethechimp"]

When was the last time a pure, fully-lived-up-to-its-potential piece came out since 2002? Since Metroid Prime 1, to be specific? Never.

That's right because games like BioShock, Mass Effect, KotOR (series), Empire: Total War and others aren't very good.

[QUOTE="muthsera666"]

That's right because games like BioShock, Mass Effect, KotOR (series), Empire: Total War and others aren't very good.

gunswordfist

Yeah those games are the bane of my existence/sarcasm

There's a lot of that going around today, especially from me. What's up with that?

Portal sucks too. (See, more sarcasm)

[QUOTE="gunswordfist"]

[QUOTE="muthsera666"]

That's right because games like BioShock, Mass Effect, KotOR (series), Empire: Total War and others aren't very good.

Yeah those games are the bane of my existence/sarcasm

There's a lot of that going around today, especially from me. What's up with that?

Portal sucks too. (See, more sarcasm)

sigh