Slashdot Mirror
Diary of an Aging Gamer
eToyChest has an insightful column up looking at the realities of the modern game store shelf, and how the titles there relate to the youth of today. From the article: "This year's summer trip to the software store made one thing very clear to me: In its efforts to follow initial adopters into adulthood, the videogame industry has--inadvertently or otherwise--left children in the dust.
There is no denying the fact that today's kids aren't going to have the same experience we had when we were young. Back then, the bread and butter of the big game companies (i.e., Atari, Sega, Nintendo and others) was the child market. Games were appealing to grown-ups, too--if only for the tech factor--but appealing to the kids was where the most money could be had. Walking into the game store meant finding a wall full of games dedicated to the young player."
The game industry only follows the money, but if it continues like this, they will only lead themselves to a generational gap, where millions of young kids are uninspired by games, if this situation is not rectified what happens when all of us "first gen'ers" get tired of games? The bubble bursts.
I plan on introducing my kids to the classics with simple gameplay like Mario, Tetris, Asteriods and the like.
Forget all those complicated "hit points", not enough mana, and other things that are best left to more complicated games. I further reccomend this route to any person that is new to gaming or just jaded of current titles. Now I didnt RTFA when I started this comment, but I see it says much the same as I have.
There is truth in humor.
You seem to underestimate the sheer amount of money that children control through their parents. E games keep Nintendo profitable.
Actually, making fun, innovative games without needing to rely on a loss-leader to sell consoles is what keeps Nintendo profitable.
With so many ppl on
If they can take the same characters over and over and do fun things with them. Mario Cart, Super Smash Brothers, Metroid Prime, who cares?
Then of course they can produce things like Pikmin, and Warioware.
Why focus so much on those few main characters? I don't see anyone complaining about the reuse of the Final Fantasy properties, or Metal Gear, Madden, etc. All of which Nintendo manages to get into their world as well.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Ah, how much truth condensed in a single post!
I grew up playing (mostly) Japanese games on my MSX, and with a few exceptions, modern games don't appeal to me so much as the mid-80s to mid-90s games did.
Yes, nowadays games have better graphics and are faster, but they more often than not playability sucks. Hell, sometimes they aren't even fun! Often they rely on very successful franchises in order to sell lots of copies (like happened with Tomb Raider 6: Age of Darkness).
I guess I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm living in Japan, and in the biggest video game shops you can see LOTS of games from the 80s ported to GBA, adapters for playing old NES cartridges on new hard, and more recently, retro game collections for PSP (Space Invaders, Namco Museum, etc). And guess what? These "retro" games are selling almost as much as the new ones.
I think it is also significant the fact that most game arcades have "retro" games mixed among the newer ones. Here are some photos of this.
I guess this has something to do with the fact that older machines had fewer hardware resources, so game developers had to write FUN games in order to sell them. Sadly, nowadays it is all about flashy graphics.
My site