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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.
Adults seem to have far more money to spend than children.
You seem to underestimate the sheer amount of money that children control through their parents. E games keep Nintendo profitable.
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
In the last ten years, the game market has turned into shit.
There's really nothing new. There are piggy-backed enhancements of first person shooters, which culminate in hyper-twitching frag-fests like Halo and Unreal, or anti-social technoligized anarchist stupidity like GTA. And what's left over are the same tired RPGs and war games. It gets old real quickly.
There have been some promising games in development. I think SWG was really trying to be revolutionary, but that game has been murdered by corporate overlords who have micromanaged the design so that the game is essentially unplayable. That goes for most of the MMORPGS.
Don't even get me started on console games. The last console I bought was the N64. There were maybe a half-dozen decent games, and then the rest were crap that was stupid and badly designed. It used to be that anything that made it to cart was considered decent quality, but that's not the case any more. There's nothing more soul-sucking than spending money for a game that bores or frustrated you a half hour into it.
There is a reason why the game industry is in a glut. They're making crap. They've become too big and slow and dumb. They keep putting a fresh coat of paint on the latest thing from 1994 and finally people are tired of it.
I've skipped several generations of consoles. I still have no desire to get one. I don't think I've missed a goddam thing either, which is a sad state of affairs.
With the PSP being popular, the blowback from suck-ass game developers is beginning to turn full circle. The older the software supported, the more likely people won't throw the stuff in the trash because the new software sucks. I expect this trend to continue until people rediscover Missile Command, Joust, Asteroids, Robotron, Stargate and the hundreds of truly original and creative games from the 80s. If you think about it, there was more innvoation in six months of any given year from 1980-1990 than there has been in the entire last decade. Pathetic.
Actually, making fun, innovative games
You mean like Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Yoshi, Yoshi, Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario, Yoshi, Yoshi, Mario and Zelda?
Yes, rehashing the same characters over and over and over and over - innovative indeed!
This month's Game Informer has an article addressing this same issue. I think the title was "The Greying of the Super Mario Crowd" or something similar. Basically, the article talked about how the game industry is catering to the people who played Mario Bros as kids, but are now older and have more mature tastes. When they were younger, they played Nintendo; when they aged, Nintendo was too kiddy for them, so they migrated to SNES and Sega. Then it was PS, then it was PS2 and so on.
While I think this is a great idea, I have to disagree with the idea that the game industry is more focused on older gamers. I used to work for a game publisher (the one we're all sick of hearing about these days) and our most profitable games were not the M or Teen rated games, but the kids' games. I never would have thought that if I hadn't started working there, but I think it's because we're all older and out of touch with what kids (10 and under) are into.
I don't think the industry needs to market to these kids though. Most of the kids games tie in to some kind of cartoon, kids movie (Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, anyone?), toy, etc. The kids already know of the characters and would probably want to buy the game just because it has their favorite cartoon character on the box. The thing with these games is that it's parent-friendly too. A non-game-savvy parent may stop by Toys R Us on the way back from work to pick junior up a treat. Is the parent going to buy some game he's never heard of, but there are posters of all over the store? Probably not. The parent will buy Kids Next Door or Britney's Dance Beat because he knows junior likes watching that on TV.
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.
I don't understand how what character is in the game has anything to do with how innovative or different the game play is. Are you trying to say that Mario Golf, Mario Cart, Mario Tennis, Super Mario Sunshine, Paper Mario, and Mario Party are all the same games beacuse they all feature Mario?
Leveraging an existing, well liked character is a great way to market innovative games, because people like to buy something that has a little bit of familarity. A lot of innovative games fail because they are too new for casual gamers to take a chance on. Take an innovative game and make Mario the main character though, and it'll sell. The best part is that everybody benefits... The people who like the tried and true, and all of us who wish games were more innovative.