Now I don’t mean commercial as in “Will Smith in I, Robot is pulling out his vintage Converse for 10 minutes lawl” commercial, I mean that as the video game industry picks up a more mainstream focus we also seem to be picking up some of their bad habits as well.
Like what you may ask? Well let’s look at the worst offenders:
It’s the highest form of flattery… NOT
Do you guys remember when World of Warcraft launched back in 2004 (lol as if anyone could forget, that was like Independence Day for MMORPG’s) and people were amazed that an MMO could pick up such a massive and loyal fan base in such a short amount of time? I mean even looking at WoW on the decline, they are 1.1 million users down and still about 6 million users ahead of everyone else.
And what happened about 2 years later? Every man and his dog were developing an MMO – and the vast majority of these were pretty damn horribad.
Want more examples? Well what is the most popular genre of game released on consoles?
FPS. And why is that? Call of Duty. Once people figured out that even if someone didn’t normally play games they would still play Call of Duty – everybody started making console/pc FPS games. Some of these semi-succeeded, most of the others (like Bodycount) flopped pretty damn hard.
It’s much the same with cinema or music, once something popular (like Spiderman) is created, a thousand other movies/bands of the same type (in this case superhero movies) begin to pop-up. It's the basic “if they are doing it then I can do it too” principle – and it’s not something we want to emulate.
If I was to look at my favourite games, they all managed to revolutionize their genre in some way. I loved Jet Set Radio Future, because there has never been anything like it (it’s a rollerblading graffiti game for god’s sake). I loved Mirror’s Edge because it’s potentially one of the best parkour simulators I’ve ever played – and I didn’t even know I wanted to play a game like that.
Everyone loves Portal and yet there is no Portal rip-off yet, because that shit just can’t be done.
In short, great games are new games – not knock-offs, and it seems like the industry is forgetting this lesson in the light of all the hollywood attention.
But wait… there’s more!
If that was our only problem, maybe I could deal with it. But I have more beef to spill, and it’s about one-year development cycle games.
That’s right Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed, I’m looking at you.
Firstly, how are these games made in a single year and then passed off as brand new titles? Do they have multiple teams working in synch on different titles that are going to be released? Are the CoD 4 and 5 teams already deep in production?
And if that’s the case, how do you choose which features you are actively preventing fans from experiencing just so you can deploy them in a later model and sell more boxes? I mean, it’s not like you are making Iphones.
Admittedly, Assassin’s Creed seems to pull this off a little better than Call of Duty, where the main reason to buy the game seems to be that the community has moved on and you still want your match making to work.
But what happened to great games that took years and years to make, like the sequel to Oblivion or Bioshock or Knights of the Old Republic?
Oh wait, they are still here – and most of them are still in development.
It’s like half the industry realises you have to pull a James Cameron sometimes and actually give a great product the time it needs before release – and the other half (Bobby Kotick) just wants to churn out titles so they can get a faster pay cheque.
I mean, it’s not like games are Resident Evil movies.
My point is – let’s relish the fact that games are becoming mainstream, without destroying everything that kept them unique for so long in the process. Personally I don’t want to meet Justin Bieber on the red carpet at the next launch of Battlefield: 3.5 in 6 months time, do you?
Let’s keep games on a nice, slow and rigorous development cycle that actually reflects the amount of effort that we expect their creators to put into them – and let’s keep games fun, fresh and unique.
If Miley Cyrus wants to publish a CD with 8 different tracks about how hard it is to get a boyfriend when you are a multi-million (billion?) dollar preteen then she can go ahead – but personally I don’t want to watch ads for 10 different Call of Duty knock-offs just because that seems to be what people are buying at the moment.