I have recently started this blog in order to vent some of the ideas, realizations, and qualms that I feel over the gaming industry as a whole.  I am tired of all these companies presenting games in order to fulfill deadlines, make profit, and most importantly, cater to mediocrity.  What happened to making games for the love of gaming?

Let us begin with the age of the “next generation console”.  The introduction of the now current three industry “Big Dogs” has created a mass monster that is continually eating away at the gaming cake.  Overall, the idea for the next generation consoles has been to incorporate gaming into the masses, spreading out the possible market share of these consoles.

The console who has most successfully climbed the mountain of public adoration is the Nintendo Wii.  Released slightly after its competitors, the Wii has brought casual gaming to an entirely new level, and its release has brought in millions of gamers trapped in slumber by the Triforce.  All of these people rave over the Nintendo Wii as if it is some miraculous gift from a divinely ordained gaming “god”; however, the sad truth of the matter is that people are unable to realize the true purpose of the Wii: to dumb down gaming in order to make it accessible to the general public.

Most of the games enjoyed by Wii owners (yes I am one as well) are quick fix or party oriented games.  There is nothing present to even remotely cater to the hardcore or even non hardcore gaming community.  The pathetic attempts of the Wii to hide the fact that it is a casual gaming system only are overshadowed by the sheer number of people I hear talking about it on a daily basis.  I was recently sitting in a classroom during summer school at my university, and I was appalled to see a group of elitist sorority girls talking about playing Super Smash Brothers.  The irony of it was, they had no clue whatsoever how to actually play the game, and they were delighted more by the idea of consuming alcoholic beverages than playing the game.  Not only this, but they spoke of the hopefulness of bringing boys over to play with them.  Apparently, gaming is being used as an aphrodisiac these days.  Maybe Nintendo should change their advertising to fit all the single nerds out there.  “The Nintendo Wii:  Our Mediocre Games are Made, You get Laid”.  It has a nice ring to it.

I shouldn’t only pick on the Wii, the other two consoles are just as guilty as it.  Particularly, the Xbox 360 has brought down gaming just as much as its contemporaries.  First let’s look at the primary problem with the system:  you are continually worried your $400 investment is going to spout the three rings of doom.  The first time it happened it was almost as heartbreaking as when I discovered Raiden was the primary playable character of Metal Gear Solid 2.

Since when have gamers had to develop ulcers because they are afraid their system is going to spontaneously explode?  Does Microsoft have some under the table agreement with the fan distributors in order to generate profit?  Did they get together and decide “Hey, let’s make a crappy system that breaks all the time, offer free repair for it although the gamer himself must wait over a month for its return, and finally advertise on a plethora of ‘fixes’ for this.  We will make millions alone off of the fans!”  The sad fact about it is, the Xbox 360 is the platform of choice for most hardcore gamers of today.

This is the true depressing point of the industry, with the induction of gaming into popular pop culture, publishers have followed the “desires” of the general public.  This desire can be summed up in three words: Blow $%#@ Up.  People want to be the hero, save the day, and most importantly, find the rocket launcher in order to completely obliterate their buddies.  This trend can be seen in the hundreds of first person shooters (FPS) out on the market or currently in the development stage.  Developers know you want one thing, and one thing only, and they have no problem catering to this mass crowd.

I honestly can’t blame them.  When games sell millions of copies just because you can blow something up in a “new way”,  there is a huge margin of profit for mediocrity.  This is exactly why we see the eventual downtrend of games because people continue to buy and support mediocrity because they can blow things up.  Not only that, but they can do it in a matter of minutes after booting up their system.  So, not only can you save the world by being the Master Chief (or his hundreds of copycats), but you can do it instantly.

As if the “Blowing $%#@ Up” category weren’t enough, there exists yet another genre of games catering to the new gaming population, Sports.  If you don’t want to melt your friend’s face, you sure as hell can slam dunk over him.  Or you can spend hours designing your playbook on Madden in order to feel like your the accomplished coach all of us will never be.  Seriously, sports gaming offers just another quick fix for the masses.  People will buy it simply to be their heroes they see on TV every Monday night (O wait sorry, every Sunday thanks to John Madden).  As the saying always goes, if you can’t blow their faces off with a rocket launcher, score a touchdown.

Sports gaming, while it has never appealed to me, does have its place.  The primary problem is, at least for me, the “fun-factor” of the game is generally overlooked in order to provide true “realism”.  I admit, am not a sports gaming fan.  I enjoy these crazy things called “fun games”.   However, if you feel that scoring that game winning touchdown after two hours of flipping through your playbook in order to beat that twelve year old over Xbox Live is fun, then sports gaming is definitely your cup of tea.  And, game developers know this.  They regularly release these yearly installments of the same game with some new added gimmick to make you drop another $60 on essentially the same game.  It’s pure genius.

The Sony Playstation 3 is guilty of most all these faults found in the 360, with the exception of the breaking.  Apparently Sony could not cut a deal with fan distributors.  While Sony does bank on the FPS and sports craze, they stay a bit more elitist claiming their system is technologically superior with its Blue Ray capabilities.

First of all, no one knew what Blue Ray was until about a year ago, and second of all, Sony has been trailing third in the console race for quite some time now.  The reason for its poor sales?  A better made system and games not catered towards the mass idiots.  A recipe for disaster if you ask me.  That is the sad state of the gaming world, we praise mediocrity while slamming quality.  Sony, while not completely innocent, has attempted to cater the most to its demographics from the Playstation2 era, to its own peril.

Clearly the head of SCEA should realize that in order to be successful in the commercialized world of gaming today you need one of three things.  You need to dumb down games so all the sorority blondes can play, you need to design bigger imaginary guns that your competition (I’m still waiting for a WMD launcher to replace the rocket launcher), or you need to sign the next big athlete to grace the cover of your Madden recopied edition, I mean 2009.

With all this taken into account, I fear for the future of gaming.  As long as we continue to embrace this mediocrity, like the overwhelming sales of Madden another recopied game, and disgrace quality games, such as Mass Effect, we will continue to see our industry fall to the masses.

Something needs to be done about this.  Some one needs to realize that EA cannot just buy every company and make it crappy.  Microsoft needs to realize that game systems need to work.  Sony needs to deliver some more dumbed down games, and Nintendo, well Nintendo is fine as is considering they are the leader in console sales.  I weep for what is to come.

That’s all for now.

-The Gaming Guru