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David Jaffe - In Ten Years Just One Game Console
The folks at 'The 1up Show' had the chance to interview David Jaffe, the well-known designer behind God of War. They discuss his upcoming project for the PS3, Calling All Cars, the future of the God of War series, as well as the ever-increasing price of making games. From the article: "A lot of games recently it's cell phone, PC, DS, PSP, if you look at EA they blanket it -- it's everywhere. As a gamer, I kind of miss the 'you can only get it on this system.' There's kind of an excitement that was about that back up until recently. With this new hardware, though, that idea is seems to be going away. Is it really all going to come down to first party now? Or it ultimately going to come to one system? 'Cause 10 years from now there's going to be one system because there's so much more third party software than first party software from any hardware manufacturer. It may not be feasible to make it the war of the first party or the war of the exclusives." The entire interview is viewable online.
There are exclusives for all the systems, but they aren't iconic in the ways they used to be.
15 years ago the average gamer age was much younger than it is now. Gamers were kids, and kids identified with icons. Whether it was TMNT or ghostbusters on the television, Nerf or Super Soakers in the back yard, or Mario and Nintendo we were young and brand loyal.
In short, things felt a lot more black and white then. There were a lot of excellent and appealing iconic games. Sonic was arguably at the best he ever would be. In fact, many people feel the same way about Mario, Link, Samus and more. Something was lost between the SNES/Genesis days and the polygonal era that followed.
To some extent, it was the exclusive games. In those days most games of note were on one system or another, with key differences notable between the ports when they weren't. The difference between the systems was much more palpable.
Beyond that, it was quite simply easier to play. That's not to say it was easier to win, I'd be shot by many gamers if I claimed the old games were easy. What I'm suggesting is that it was much easier for anyone to simply pick up a game, a controller, and have fun.
This is something that up until recently the market had forgotten. Regardless of whether I like playing games for 15 minutes or 15 hours (ah, college) it's nice to have fun the moment I start playing. The longer it takes to get the ball of fun rolling, the less likely I am to maintain interest.
In conclusion, games should live by the Othello motto. "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master". Complicated and confusing controls/gameplay do not a deep game make anymore than confusing and disjointed plot/dialogue makes a good movie.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
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