The opinions, views and postulations of Mikael Grizzly.

• 5Nov 07

  Direction of the gaming industry

  I wonder where the industry is heading to, and the first image that comes to mind is that of a communist Prime Minister of the late People's Republic of Poland: "Comrades, last year, we were on the edge of an abyss. This year, we have made a major step forward!".

  Call me an old geezer who can't keep up with the times, but I can't help but mourn how games become cheap entertainment, concentrated on flashy graphics and "kewl" looks, rather than interesting writing, plot, choice and consequence and most of all, engaging and original gameplay.

  Bethesda takes Fallout and rapes it, by stripping it of its aesthetic, RPG mechanics and freedom of roaming, replacing it with Oblivion-derived looks and gameplay, making it just another sci-fi shooter on the market. Crysis is hailed as the "next gen" shooter along with Bioshock, while in reality, they offer absolutely nothing new, least of all in terms of gameplay, as "emergent gameplay" is just an excuse for "we can't be arsed to create interesting gameplay, so do it yourself".

  And the gaming press supports the dumbification and consolization of the PC gaming, which was once the vanguard of ambition, quality and interesting gameplay, by praising the newly released titles and overhyping them, completely forgetting about what gameplay should be (interesting and original) or (in case of sequels) completely disregarding previous games (vide Fallout 3 or Oblivion).

  I pray for a second Great Videogame Market Crash.

  • Posted Nov 5, 2007 9:07 am PT
  • Category: Games
  • 0 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »