Already An Old Story?
"E3 is going to be downsized." Our normal reaction to this news story was something like "Oh noes, where are we going to see now booth babes?"; "This is the end of gaming!"; "Can somebody give me an aspirine?". I personally thought that this gotta mean something. I know, I know, it is going to be transformed in a rather boring business conference or something like that. But this means something. I was thinking that a new age of gaming is approaching...
What Did You Just Said?!?
OK, but why I do think so?!
Some of you might know that gaming isn't all about shiny boxes, booth babes or blistering graphics without any gameplay. I said "some of you" because I see so often gamers that judge a game by it's graphics. Or it's box. There are such people and even my dad is quite superficial on this side of things.
The last E3 shows were quite superficial, they were great shows, but where are the great games, where is the gameplay? No Mr. Developer, you can't fool me with a shiny golden trailer, we need gameplay on our hands. And that's why the purpose of this show failed.
Pure gameplay. These are two words that could describe the so-called "golden age of gaming" or old-school gaming. To tell you the truth, there's no golden age of gaming. Some of us just like to think that at that time there were only good games. Wrong.
Everywhen there were good games and not so good games. Just that, in the past few years, there have been proofs many developers are quite superficial and that they care only about the money, not the gamers. The problem is that there are few games that are quite good. But they are hard to find. Or should I say "It depends on your tastes". Then you can say you don't like any game that was recently released.
Which is still quite rubbish. Don't like The Sims? There's always a Darwinia or Perimeter for you. Hate Halo? There's always a Half-Life or Doom. We can make choices, but some of us don't want to risk...
Then Something Green Arrives...
... Especially when it comes to marketing. Gaming has become an industry and people are worried about how to get more money for their company. From that to stop caring about gamers is only a step. You see, in the past few years, there have been many developers to enter the gaming industry because they heard they can make lots of money. Even though they barely know what gamers really want. Not that someone realised how to make a game to satisfy everybody.
Because you can't make a game that would be AAA for everybody. There will always be an outlier to consider it mediocre. There's always the gaming critics to come with a shocking rating. As long as games are made by humans, games can't reach perfection, as any other thing humans did. All we can do is make something close to perfection.
Still You Said Something About A New Era In Gaming...
Well, I'm not a prophet, neither do you, we can't tell when it will begin, it may be an unexpected turn of events. But one thing is for sure: it will be quite surprising. You see, everywhere retro has become "en vogue" once again. So does old-school gaming. Maybe we will return to the form those old games had, with the spare of more or less casual gamers... Maybe once we can't do anymore improvements to the graphics, we will concentrate once again on gameplay, but with modern graphics...
Almost everything is just speculation, but one thing is for sure: we will need lots of visionaries. Avantgardists. People who think at future simple. People who can innovate our way to think, our way to play.
Ionescu Florin