Post by Forgefire on Nov 3, 2010 2:19:45 GMT -5
I really hate to say it. At twenty five, nearly twenty six, I was sure that the ever present shield of cynicism and fatalism built up over the average american lifetime would be enough to gird me proverbially against what are in hindsight rather obvious realizations. Sadly I, and odds are good many of you, still have this notion stuck in our heads that the game industry has once again found that blissful utopia that so often crept into our dreams.
Part of the problem is most likely us. After all when gamers are kids, we are still kids. Kids tend to idealize anything related to a source of joy in our own lives. Toys come from santa or are purchased as a small extension of our parents love and affection. The people on TV aren't actors but real people in happy and funny or exciting situations who always win in the end. Cake and candy and ice cream all must be kinda good for you and your parents only stop you eating it because they don't want you eating it all. So it would follow that game designers are happy creative people who get to sit around a table all day figuring out how to make a good story or fun controls and then scampering back to their desks and making it all happen.
But you grow up and find out that the toys are most often made in china or some other country by kids younger than you for pennies they need to eat. You find out that most actors are, or were, crazy drugged up sexed up sociopaths who coudln't care less about you if they met you. Unless you are shelling out big bucks your candy, ice cream and cake all come from joyless factories or at best local super market bakeries where everyone is bitter at a slave driver boss and painfully low wages for difficult work. As for game designers, even those at the top of the heap seem to have superiors who are more concerned with money, bottom lines and deadlines than with making a product people will like.
We can tell ourselves it wasn't always like this. even as late as 2000 games like final fantasy 9, Mega Man Legends/Legends 2 and Parasite Eve 2 just to name a few seemed wonderful and inventive. One can still imagine the unmitigated joy of crafting each of those characters out, shaping everything and knowing a small but devoted set of gamers will look back on these things years later as a comforting attempt at something permanent and joyful in a disturbingly finite world.
Its a lie, but to paraphrase my ex "it's a nice lie."
Brothers and Sisters the sad truth is the game industry hasn't recovered one bit. Yes, one can make claims to dozens of new titles are being released or announced which prove a return of the golden age. Both newly developed games and the apparent return of several cult classics would suggest that the industry has realized they can only hold the mass market for so long, and only by pulling themselves painfully thin. New innovations in technology have also cropped up, the reaped rewards of decades-long development and mistakes turned to potential triumphs. We see the conglomerate giants stepping out of the way so their most talented development houses can do what they do best, and everyone seems to understand that today the their customers are not inherently criminals, even if a few bad apples spoil it for the bunch.
Its easy to say the golden age is returning, and to hope it is true. But brothers and sisters let me posit one thing to you.
In 2005 Dan Hsu, then editor in Cheif of Electronic Gaming monthly, brought to light one of the most well known and little spoken of practices within the gaming industry, the corrupt practice of buying and selling favorable press to game developers and development companies. He did not transform it into a crusade by naming names, nor did he sell out his sources. For perhaps the first time in gaming history, a gaming journalist acted as a journalist when it counted.
Consider the above for a moment. Now consider what the gaming industry has really become. It is common knowledge that development houses are often purchased outright simply to keep down competition or buy the name of a series that is or was successful. Worse still the creative leadership within many companies often gets overridden by marketing and sales people in a mad dash to hit as many markets at once leaving many modern games far too scattered for any one audience to gain enough enjoyment. Then you have the more serious, and some would argue illicit practices. Things like withholding wages and the 'working beta' status of Microsoft 360 products, or the staged gameplay footage with devices such as the Knekt. For all of its strides and for all the work it has done to come back to its roots the gaming indusry is sadly allowed to operate with minimal accountability.
One could easily go out on a limb and claim that gaming is slowly pulling away from the painful 'hardcore' movement and the 'casual' movement alike and back to a place that thsoe of us who started out with our Calicovisions and NES machines can appreciate. However to ignore the fact that there are still problems, and more to the point that there is no oversight is to invite a quick return to dark times.
I know this post will probalby seem like nonsensical rambling, but we are at a threshold of a new era and if we want to keep it that means working for it. That means we need to buy new when we can for games that we want to see continue or be 'copied'. We need to be vocal and active to game companies for the good and the bad. It means we, as the returners, need to show the world that gaming can stand for something, that it can be a pillar of hope and joy and innocence in an otherwise dark world. But most of all it means we have to be adults and hold the people who craft the games accountable, not only to us but to thsoe under them and the industry they support.
I would like to leave you with one last thought if I may. Once again in 2005, Upon release of the X box 360 Dan Hsu had an interview with Peter Moore in which he refused to play softball with the lead marketer for the product. Many of Hsu's contemporaries decried his actions as overly hostile and aggressive 'for a game magazine'. Even now the 360 is known to have design flaws, and the new Knekt system they have implemented was scaled back before release, with almost no media attention paid to either the reduction in IR emitter density or the alleged staging of E3 show events. Now let me ask you, do you think things will start getting better if we just sit back and wait?
Part of the problem is most likely us. After all when gamers are kids, we are still kids. Kids tend to idealize anything related to a source of joy in our own lives. Toys come from santa or are purchased as a small extension of our parents love and affection. The people on TV aren't actors but real people in happy and funny or exciting situations who always win in the end. Cake and candy and ice cream all must be kinda good for you and your parents only stop you eating it because they don't want you eating it all. So it would follow that game designers are happy creative people who get to sit around a table all day figuring out how to make a good story or fun controls and then scampering back to their desks and making it all happen.
But you grow up and find out that the toys are most often made in china or some other country by kids younger than you for pennies they need to eat. You find out that most actors are, or were, crazy drugged up sexed up sociopaths who coudln't care less about you if they met you. Unless you are shelling out big bucks your candy, ice cream and cake all come from joyless factories or at best local super market bakeries where everyone is bitter at a slave driver boss and painfully low wages for difficult work. As for game designers, even those at the top of the heap seem to have superiors who are more concerned with money, bottom lines and deadlines than with making a product people will like.
We can tell ourselves it wasn't always like this. even as late as 2000 games like final fantasy 9, Mega Man Legends/Legends 2 and Parasite Eve 2 just to name a few seemed wonderful and inventive. One can still imagine the unmitigated joy of crafting each of those characters out, shaping everything and knowing a small but devoted set of gamers will look back on these things years later as a comforting attempt at something permanent and joyful in a disturbingly finite world.
Its a lie, but to paraphrase my ex "it's a nice lie."
Brothers and Sisters the sad truth is the game industry hasn't recovered one bit. Yes, one can make claims to dozens of new titles are being released or announced which prove a return of the golden age. Both newly developed games and the apparent return of several cult classics would suggest that the industry has realized they can only hold the mass market for so long, and only by pulling themselves painfully thin. New innovations in technology have also cropped up, the reaped rewards of decades-long development and mistakes turned to potential triumphs. We see the conglomerate giants stepping out of the way so their most talented development houses can do what they do best, and everyone seems to understand that today the their customers are not inherently criminals, even if a few bad apples spoil it for the bunch.
Its easy to say the golden age is returning, and to hope it is true. But brothers and sisters let me posit one thing to you.
In 2005 Dan Hsu, then editor in Cheif of Electronic Gaming monthly, brought to light one of the most well known and little spoken of practices within the gaming industry, the corrupt practice of buying and selling favorable press to game developers and development companies. He did not transform it into a crusade by naming names, nor did he sell out his sources. For perhaps the first time in gaming history, a gaming journalist acted as a journalist when it counted.
Consider the above for a moment. Now consider what the gaming industry has really become. It is common knowledge that development houses are often purchased outright simply to keep down competition or buy the name of a series that is or was successful. Worse still the creative leadership within many companies often gets overridden by marketing and sales people in a mad dash to hit as many markets at once leaving many modern games far too scattered for any one audience to gain enough enjoyment. Then you have the more serious, and some would argue illicit practices. Things like withholding wages and the 'working beta' status of Microsoft 360 products, or the staged gameplay footage with devices such as the Knekt. For all of its strides and for all the work it has done to come back to its roots the gaming indusry is sadly allowed to operate with minimal accountability.
One could easily go out on a limb and claim that gaming is slowly pulling away from the painful 'hardcore' movement and the 'casual' movement alike and back to a place that thsoe of us who started out with our Calicovisions and NES machines can appreciate. However to ignore the fact that there are still problems, and more to the point that there is no oversight is to invite a quick return to dark times.
I know this post will probalby seem like nonsensical rambling, but we are at a threshold of a new era and if we want to keep it that means working for it. That means we need to buy new when we can for games that we want to see continue or be 'copied'. We need to be vocal and active to game companies for the good and the bad. It means we, as the returners, need to show the world that gaming can stand for something, that it can be a pillar of hope and joy and innocence in an otherwise dark world. But most of all it means we have to be adults and hold the people who craft the games accountable, not only to us but to thsoe under them and the industry they support.
I would like to leave you with one last thought if I may. Once again in 2005, Upon release of the X box 360 Dan Hsu had an interview with Peter Moore in which he refused to play softball with the lead marketer for the product. Many of Hsu's contemporaries decried his actions as overly hostile and aggressive 'for a game magazine'. Even now the 360 is known to have design flaws, and the new Knekt system they have implemented was scaled back before release, with almost no media attention paid to either the reduction in IR emitter density or the alleged staging of E3 show events. Now let me ask you, do you think things will start getting better if we just sit back and wait?
