Welcome to my blog ... the cynical gamer

The gaming industry is big business. Big money. Apparently, bigger than Hollywood (or, so I read). What happens in our capitalistic world when something becomes big business? They generally tend to forget about their customers. Corporations are dominated by market share and market profiling from the advertising agencies which service them rather than maintaining a real dialogue with their customers. Development times of titles are growing as the demands created by improving technology make game developers take greater amounts of time to publish titles. A frequest occurance for gamers is the shifting release dates of games. This has created the notion of "it will be published when it is finished" as opposed to set release dates for game titles. I only read this morning that Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl has been pushed back until October 2006. Stalker is becoming the greatest game that will never be released. These things are enough to create some cynicism even in the most optomistic gamer.

It seems to me that gaming magazines have got their noses so far up the backsides of publishers and developers that honest, reporting and review of software titles is becoming a thing of the past. With the amount of money invested in the development of titles publishers want a guaranteed return on their investment. They don't want to spend four years in development and tens of millions of dollars for the game not to sell. Publishers rely on the reviews of magazines to sell their software. Magazines, in turn, are funded by the advertising of these publishers and rely on their advertising dollars to fund the publication and ensure ongoing profits of the magazine. It is a vicious cycle.

Furthermore, some game developers are saying that they would prefer to make a shorter game, but of higher quality, rather than publish games which are going to be an epic. This appears to be an undercurrent that is affecting the way game makers approach game creation at the moment. Obviously, the formula: (development time x money invested = minmum number of games sold for return on investment), affects the way publishers approach game development. Games (tm) quoted one of Nintendo's gurus, Shigeru Miyamoto, as saying, "There's not a lot I want to play right now ... A lot of games out there are just too long; if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play." Miyamoto's idea of ideal gameplay time for a title would be "a ten hour completion cycle." Unfortunately, it appears that the days of games such as Morrowind (which boasted well over 100 hours of gameplay) are limited. Look at Half Life 2 as a case in point. The collector's edition cost $129.95 (Aus). What did you get for this extra $30 in price over the standard edition? A T Shirt and a couple of extra downloads from Steam. It was possible to complete Half Life 2 in ten to fifteen hours and has been finished in the done quick range (speeddemosarchive.com) in as little as 2 hours. (Mind you someone finished Morrowind in the done quick range in 7 mins). It seems to me that you get better value for money buying a DVD than you do a game at times. How does the five year development cycle of Half Life 2 relate to fifteen hours of game play?

The other thing that concerns me about this industry is a lack of diversity in the industry. It feels like every second game to be released is a First Person Shooter. The market is dominated by First Person Shooters, MMOs, Role Playing Games, the occasional Real Time Strategy and sports games. Singleplayer gaming experience is about telling a story, but even those stories that we have forced down our throats in games are somewhat cliched and recycled. Two games that I have just completed are FEAR and Quake IV. FEAR was hardly a horror game (maybe it would be scary if you are five) and Quake IV is hardly any different than Quake II. While I thoroughly enjoyed Far Cry as a game the story was enough to scoff at. Where are the real story tellers in video games? Where is the notion of unfettered creativity which we are told exists with programers and coders. I really do feel that fifteen years ago, in the days of the Commodore Amiga, game developers were more creative in how they developed games considering the restrictions of the hardware they had to work with. Now, with the possibility to create amazing and unreal worlds we are presented with a situation that not much is new in gaming. It is all old hat. Sports games are a good case in point. Electronic Arts has dominated the market in sports games for many years. It is probably due to many of these titles that EA can say that they are the biggest software developer in the world. But what have they really done to change the annual franchises which they publish every year? I don't think that NHL has changed since it was an awesome game on the Megadrive. Of course, the player names have changed but the gameplay has not. Most sports games are like this. Why would you want to purchase the same title every 12 months just to play the same game over and over.

It seems the gaming industry needs a good kick in the pants. The only way that this can be delivered is through independant game development. Two titles which I play at the moment which fall outside of the mainstream publishers are Live For Speed and FIA: GTR. Live For Speed would have to be one of the best racing sims around and can be purchased online for 12 quid. Why would you bother buying the arcadey V8 Supercars 2 for $89 when you can buy a true racing sim for a fourth of the price? Long live independent game development and may they "keep the bastards honest" (because you certainly can't keep them honest in politics).

Anyway, this is what the cynical gamer will be about. My thoughts on gaming, game reviews, previews and other stuff like that. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to post your comments and create discussion about the gaming industry.