Question in the title. Do you think that the number of quality games would increase if people funded indie developers more often through crowdsourcing type of initiatives? Or, do you think the games would be worse since there is no incentive to release on a schedule, etc.?

Ever heard the ACDC song "Money Talks"? If people buy buggy games they will keep releasing them in an unfinished state. If people buy the new game every year then they will keep releasing them that often. If people only bought a new Battlefield if it was significantly different from the last one and was reasonably polished then that is how they would be released. Granted, if people don't buy a game they still need to provide a reason why, either by *****ing on a forum, filling out a survey, whatever or else a publisher like EA or Activision will probably just blame piracy or some other reason for the poor sales. They might even try to get a new law or two passed to make the industry more profitable haha.

Everyone seems to have a pretty short memory... DICE has been releasing their Battlefield games in a terrible, buggy state for years now. Battlefield 2 was extremely buggy on release.. I remember having to download like a 1 or 2GB patch for that game... Battlefield 3 was bad on release, and now Battlefield 4. People keep eating the games up though so they keep selling unfinished versions and fixing them as they go.

Companies like EA and Activision exist to make money first and foremost. Game development studios exist to make money. Only if a studio has a lot of money or wants to take a big chance do they go out of their way to be creative. Yes, game developers might be genuinely invested in the game they are working on, but in the end, the games are made to make money. Now indie studios are another story; they probably care less about how much money they make and care a lot more about the quality of the game.

If you take money out of the picture then the level of creativity and quality would probably go up across the board. Of course, the only real way for that to occur is if the development team was supported by donations or something similar.

What are some games out there that are unique/provide a different experience than some of the more popular mainstream games? Are there any hidden gems floating around these days?

On one hand, I like that there are some games that are like interactive movies, because some of them are genuinely interesting because of the ability to interact with a movie-like story instead of just sitting back and watching it from a recliner. On the other hand though, (way) back in the day games like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga were fun just because they were fun. There was a premise that may or may not have added an additional enjoyment factor to them, but they were enjoyable pretty much exclusively for their gameplay. Now, take a game like Halo: Combat Evolved. For many people, the gameplay was fun AND the story was interesting. I guess the games that I'm not too impressed with in particular are the ones that are supposed to have a good story but also have traditional gameplay elements to them. So, instead of setting out to be an interactive movie, the game would, for example, have an interesting/decent story but have mediocre gameplay mechanics that people only tolerate to get through the story. For example, if you played a JRPG where the story was really polished but the gameplay basically boiled down to turn-based combat where all you do is click the enemy when it is your turn then to me it seems like that would have just been much better off being an animated film/tv series or something. Another example would be a survival-like FPS where you only used one weapon throughout the entire game, there was only one enemy type whose AI was dumb as rocks, etc. but it had a good story. Unless the story was really really designed in such a way that it felt ok just to be part of an interactive movie, it seems like it would be better off just to make it a book/movie/comic/tv show.

Am I making sense?

Yeah I'm aware that more games are getting better in the story department, but if you look at the number of quality books or movies compared to games it is staggering. Granted movies and books have been around for much longer, but still.

What prompted this was I was talking to a friend the other day about an RPG he was playing and he said: "oh you know the gameplay isn't that fun, but it's an RPG, I'm playing it for the story".

This certainly isn't the case with everyone, but it seems like a fair amount of people, myself included at times, have gotten to where they play a game/games just to:

- Get a high k/d (for a shooter)

- Beat it for the sake of beating it (perhaps it is a classic or something; I sometimes force myself to beat games that I rented or bought just to "tough it out" and also just in case the last 25% of the game turns out to be awesome or something).

- Beat it because they have a backlog and want to get "caught up"

I certainly have a larger backlog than I would like to admit, so I can definitely sympathize with feeling like I have some sort of duty to finish these things that I have spent my money on only to have them gather "dust" (Steam games...). I can also sympathize with wanting to beat a game if you're really into the story and everything. However, it seems to me that these kind of motivations for playing games are more common these days. Perhaps it is because I am older and/or discussions about games are more widespread than the old days where you either read something in a magazine or talked to some friends in your class at school about it. These days you could spend all your time simply reading reviews and news articles, watching gameplay videos, etc. instead of actually playing a game! Maybe the other part of this, at least for people around my age, is that when you were a kid (at least for me and my friends), getting a new game was a BIG deal. You only ended up owning a 6-12 total so you played the ever-living crap out of them. Plus, when you're a kid things seem to have more replay value and it doesn't take as much to impress you (these days I'm all like: "shit, these bullet physics aren't realistic blah blah")

What do you think? Has it always been this way and ust become more noticeable now that everyone is "connected"? Or did something start to happen a few years ago to push it in this direction?

For me, I think one of the things I did that did NOT help was I read a lot of "top 10" lists for RPGs, shooters, etc., "best game of the year" lists, "all-time classics" lists, etc. and made a big list of all the games I wanted to play (did the same for books and movies too, but that's another story), as well as started rating games after I finished them. While doing so exposed me to lots of great games that I might not have played otherwise, I feel like it has, at times, pushed me more towards playing games because they are on my to-do list rather than because they are supposed to be entertaining. Personally, I guess I'll keep my list, but won't try to think of it as something I have to get done as quickly as possible or something. Instead, I'll see it as a list of things to play if I get bored or want something new to play and to be ok with the idea that I might never finish it. I'll probably be starting a spending freeze for new games though because of my backlog :-) (only exceptions might be Halo 5, MGS5 or new Batman game, but that's IT!).

Now, this isn't true all the time, but I have certainly heard this before more than once:

"Well, the gameplay is meh/ok, but the story is great"

So, let me get this straight, you are playing a game because it has a decent/good story, but the gameplay isn't that good? Why not watch a movie or read a book instead? Most video games aren't known for their stellar storytelling..

To me, it seems like the only thing left to do short of VR for first person games is to have some sort of goggles or glasses where the display is extra wide, taking advantage of someone's entire field of view (peripheral vision and all). Has anyone setup anything like EyeFinity? Does that actually widen the view or just stretch everything out?

Alright, seriously, Batman has been a complete and total sicko in the last two games. In Arkham City and his treatment of Mr. Freeze and Robin, and in Origins with him dropping thug off a building, telling thugs that it will "only hurt when you breathe" and treatment of Black Mask, Batman seems like an overly violent ass. When did people start liking a Batman who breaks thugs' bones for fun and tortures villains? Next thing you know one of the new features of Arkham Knight will be choosing your torture tools like GTA 5 or introducing creative ways to kill thugs. Yes, ok, so Batman has done some questionable things before. For example, flying a thug off the end of the Batplane in the animated series, etc. and maybe it is me, but I've never been a fan of the more Dark Knight Returns kind of Batman.

For some of you I'm sure this kind of post is akin to beating a dead horse or is just plain blase, but I'll go on just in case.

I've been playing games for a long time, just like many of you. There have been a lot of great games out there, but I've either noticed a trend in the past few years or have simply matured and begun to notice that many new games are increasingly reliant on technological horsepower. For some games, like the Battlefield Bad Company series for example, this turned out to be a great deal of fun. After having played FPS games for years where an annoying sniper in a window kept on causing problems for you and your team, it was extremely satisfying to be able to blow out the wall they were behind. Or, take a game like Crysis, where you could down trees in the road to change the traffic patterns of the soldiers.

However, it seems like for many games, the only thing that really changes are the graphics. The gameplay is basically the same as the other hundred games in the same genre released in the same year, with minor gameplay tweaks (example: for shooters it is more/less recoil, faster/slower movement speed, etc.). I haven't noticed a ton of new gameplay concepts in the past few years, and the quality of stories in games does not seem to have improved much at all. I realize that tried and true formulas with minor tweaks are often commercially successful, but it would be so refreshing if studios dedicated more resources to creative talent instead of making sure the pores on a characters face are well defined or making sure that a brick wall crumbles in just the right way. Take some of the money dedicated to the technological advancements and hire some top-notch writers. Hire (more) top-notch gameplay designers. Instead of trying new approaches to gameplay in AAA $60 titles, try some cheaper proof-of-concept indie-like games to see if the ideas are well received or not. If they are, then great, start incorporating them into the AAA story-driven titles. If not, then only 5 million has been lost instead of 100. That 5 million won't be a total loss either. You'll learn something with every POC/experiment you do.

Start re-introducing mod tools back into games. I understand that it extends the replayability of games beyond what the business leaders think is ideal, but if you take a more long-term approach I really think that done right, this would cultivate all kinds of great ideas. Take Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, Counterstrike. All of them started as mods. They were so successful that Valve bought them and made quite a bit of money on them. Not only can mod tools bring out new ideas, but it is a great way to find development, design and/or artistic talent. Just think about it.. people that are so interested in making their ideas come to life that they spend large amount of their time, for free, to work on it. Those kind of people, the ones that really love that kind of work, are the ones you want working on your next big IP. If these individuals had to try to make these ideas come to life from scratch, it might simply be too daunting (not everyone, even a great developer or designer can write a game engine from scratch). But, if you give them tools to help them out a little bit, as well as access to a game engine they can do some great stuff.

There's my two cents.