Games are art. They have artistic elements and are made by artists. The key difference here is that games used to be, for lack of a better term, poetic. When you don't have to answer to a board of producers, the game can be anything you want, and more personal. Few, if any, major developers have enough sway to get away with that anymore. There's no more developing Final Fantasy or Rockman in your garage... you have to make something that publishers will want to sell (that is, if you care about being profitable). Don't forget... next-gen development costs are HUGE.Â
It's just like any other form of mass media, in short. The guy who designed the Coca-Cola logo made a piece of art... but few are going to truly admire its aesthetic qualities, because it was handed to a marking staff and a bunch of editors to be mashed down and commercialized. Game artists work for a paycheck, not for sake of art... at least in effect. The rare game that is truly artistic falls by the wayside time and again, while another artist gets paid just as much to convert Dora the Explorer into a GBA sprite for the sixth time.
It's a shame game developers seem to be overworked... I'm always on the lookout in case one found enough spare time to get a copy of Director and make a cool game that's just what they wanted and nothing more. To be frank, if you're looking for games like that, you will never see them on a next-gen console ever again. Video games turned from a nerdy hobby into a billion-dollar industry... so only lame businessmen with billions of dollars get to pick what comes to PS3/360/Wii. Â
I'm primarily waiting for Crisis Core, FFT and D&D Tactics.
That, and I haven't played Ace Combat X or the full version of LocoRoco yet... combine that with psp's "other capabilities" and I've got more portable gaming than I need. Â
Those junky 3rd party comanies like Play-On, Intec, Madcatz and Nyko all sell crap. Almost everything I've bought from these companies has either been junky or broken. Trust me, just spend the extra $5 to get the first-party stuff... you'll actually end up saving money because you won't have to rebuy your gear in the first place.
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