EA and Activision are ruining the gaming industry! They swallow up franchises and developers and sell watered-down titles with obvious cash sinks like DLC that should be in the base game. Whatever happened to good publishers that respected their customers? Games used to be built on creativity and inspiration. Now they’re just the same recycled crap!
This isn’t a direct quote from any particular corner of the internet but if you’ve made any attempt to discuss video games online it’s a sentiment you’re familiar with. Across the web there’s no shortage of people willing to take shots at corporations for ruining their favourite pastime and it’s hard not to agree with them. Back when gaming was young there was no shortage of innovative titles (and there still isn’t if you know where to look) but now we find ourselves inundated with derivative crap. What the hell happened? How can an industry built by geeks and thinkers be twisted into such a monstrosity? Why can’t companies simply listen to their fans?
First off, while the vocal minorities of the internet may seem to control the discourse, their endless diatribes that are strewn across endless forums say far less about a game than sales figures. For every dissatisfied customer who pours his soul into a post that details the horrible problems of a title there are usually ten who have never even discussed gaming on the internet. It’s a fairly new problem of Reality Not Being Realistic Enough (I’ll spare you the TV Tropes hyperlink because frankly you need to get some sleep). Message boards are a great place to discuss ideas and learn more about a subject, but they can become insular and closed off from reality. Take Battlefield 3′s premium service for example. The internet was on fire when this was announced and you would think EA was mining your credit card information to fund orphan killing death squads. The entire internet seemed to be against it yet the collective voices of criticism are a drop in the ocean of subscribers (1.3 million at last count). Sure you may not have bought it, but we did.
This brings me to my second point: this is exactly what we asked for. By ‘we’ I mean the bloated cultural hodgepodge we sprouted from. While you may be a unique little snowflake, you’ll inevitably become a part of the grey icy slush that constitutes the rest of humanity. Our entire outlook on the world comes from this slush. Art is the mirror that we hold up to this gravely mix of ice and dirt. It’s a reflection of our culture’s values and ideas. Consider that the next time you look at the state of video games in a negative light. Modern Warfare 3 is after all, the fastest selling piece of entertainment ever. It’s not like Activision managed to brainwash 6.5 million people. This is what the general public wanted. This is a reflection of the general video game market.
Behold the hollow shell of modern storytelling and weep as you realize that this is only a reflection of who we are.
Look around you and tell me I’m wrong. Pressing ‘like’ on Facebook passes for activism. We have a love-hate relationship with reality television. Consumerism and vapidity infect every aspect of our culture. When you consider this, it’s really hard to blame major publishers for the state of modern gaming. Activision and EA are businesses at the end of the day. They aren’t looking to spark a new intellectual movement or change the dialog on hot-button issues. They’re trying to secure stable revenue for their shareholders. Given the shared culture of the Western world (Japan can play too though), the most obvious way to do that has been to create shallow, cinematic escapism. Well, that was the case for several years at least.
We’ve entered into a sort of transitional period in the world of gaming. Many of the folks at the Inaugural Baltimore Area Game Developers Beer Night were fascinated in the recent trend of decentralization in the gaming industry. Whether it’s born from a reactionary dissatisfaction with state of video games or it was carried over from the old standards of the industry, there’s a clear shift happening right now. We owe the recent surge in indie gaming to this change in the values of our little corner of culture. People have found the most effective tool in voicing their opinions to major publishers imaginable: their wallets. If you stop buying games that you don’t like then eventually developers are going to try to make something you do. Here I am telling you to be a little consumerist after that last paragraph.
While much of the modern world runs on money, there is still room for discussion. Not the masturbatory vitriol of closed off internet communities but rather the kind of discussion that pushes the dialog on video games further; the kind where you actually start talking about video games as a real artistic medium. How can we expect progress in the conversation when it’s carved up by cliques and insults? The self-imposed exile of nostalgic gamers longing for the return of thoughtful and original titles has run its course. Step out from your gated community and look at what intellectual isolationism has wrought.
It’s not a problem just of video games. We’re dealing with the exact same thing with movies and books. With games, I think, our big problem is there are very few people who can have a reasonable discussion. It’s just not grown up enough. The Escapist was lauded for having “insightful” articles a few years back (now they’re just Kotaku with a different layout) and those “insightful” articles read at best like something written by a freshman college student just after his first few classes of literary analysis, only applied to old Nintendo games.
Check out the RPS interview with the Ice Pick Lodge guys. They have a fascinating approach to video games, or better yet play The Void. After playing it think about how it was made by 7 people and how that stacks up to other indie developers that make retro-styled 8-bit platformers and jRPG-style games purely for the nostalgia factor.
Dear Esther releases and there’s an implosion in the world of game journalism because few people know how to tackle it and what the hell to do with it. Do you judge it by its gameplay? Do you give it an x/10 score? Is it a game? Is it good? People were lost like paraplegic puppies in a thick fog, not to mention forum and image-board dwellers.
People need to start thinking, and learn to think hard and deep. The scourge of our modern society is consumerism, but I think we need to work on an immunity to mass marketing first and foremost. I’ll wrap this up before I end up writing a post longer than the article.
Well said, sir, well said.
The problem with having a “reasonable” conversation is that there are a myriad different definitions of what a “video game” is, and how people define it shows their ideological bend. I liked the interview with the Ice Pick Lodge guys, but found it amusing that, for their revolutionary perspective, much of their discourse was rooted in examples/criticism from literature. (As an aside, I have not played The Void yet.) I do think more critics need to start taking particular stands towards games, but I recognize that it is difficult because the discourse of how to talk about games is still being formed. The idea that “games are fun” or “games are immersive” seems to be dominating the sites that get the most traffic.
Having a client like Steam that makes it financially possible for people to find and buy indie titles is a step in the right direction, as is their Greenlight project. But leaving these tools in the hands of everyone (and aided by the problematic Metacritic) means that they too could simply trend towards cliches or comfortable gaming tropes. It could expose players to more games, or have the effect of discouraging experimentation for fear that it will never get upvoted enough.
They are in the business of making money, but are they? EA stock is totally in the shitter. Activision isn’t as bad off, but it hasn’t been skyrocketing either. Software companies might make what people buy, but they are totally inept when it comes to figuring out what people want next. Five years ago, they made nothing but WWII shooters because that was supposedly what the market wanted. COD IV destroyed that instantly. But now all everyone makes are modern brown shooters. Creative people used to be in charge of what was made. Now the airheads in suits decide what gets made — people with no appreciation for what they are making, and that’s why what they are making is shit.
Like I said, we’re in a very strange period right now. The gigantic release of Modern Warfare 3 was still less than a year ago but we already see consumers shifting towards smaller developers. Just wait. Once a few of the bigger indie developers get recognized, they’re going to be bought up and become part of the big gaming machine.
The problem with Jay’s advice is that there is pleasure in going to a movie in and of itself. You usually go with friends. It’s often the only thing to do in a medium to small town. If the movie is bad, this becomes a fun topic of discussion with your friends during the dinner afterward. This is why people still show up to the multiplex intending to see any movie, not a specific movie.
Similarly, there is pleasure in purchasing a video game (or most anything really) and playing it with friends. Even if you are not interested in the newest brown and bloom shooter, there is a feeling of being left out when everybody else is playing it.
Frankly, I do not buy new releases at full price and I save quite a bit of money employing this strategy. However, I admit that one of the downsides is that I miss out on the release hype. Once I get around to the game the discussions have been had, the multiplayer base has fled and in some cases the servers are a month away from being shut down.
And it’s not like I never get around to actually playing Modern Warfare. It’s certainly worth my time at a price point in the realm of $.01 and $15. This is what used games and Steam sales are for.
“vocal minority”
There’s that buzzword again! I would have thought that Gather Your Party was above that sorta thing, but I guess not. Where is the rest of the “silent majority” that somehow can’t connect to a video game forum in 2012 when practically everything in your house can connect to the Internet? Especially when almost every game these days forces on-line connectivity and encourages you to participate with the rest of the community.
If the silent majority consists of Wii Fit and FarmVille gamers who pick up the latest “AAA” title and play it for 2 days before shelving it, then consider me proud to be the educated “vocal minority” consumer group.
As for the ever-growing resentment against EA, I suggest a little further reading. It’s something that has been brewing for decades and not just because of anti-gay Internet bullies like Kotaku or IGN would have you believe.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_14/87-The-Conquest-of-Origin
I would categorize most of the people who browse this site as part of that minority. It’s not that casual gamers don’t have the ability to connect to the internet or discuss video games in general, it’s that they don’t care to. While we’ve made strides in having video games recognized as an art form, most of those who buy them are looking for the same shallow escapism you find everywhere else in Western culture. It’s a double edged sword though. Sure a lot of the people who discuss games online are at least somewhat educated on the topic, but their voices are marginalized because placating them results in a few more units sold or some good PR at best.
I completely agree with you. Oh don’t act like I don’t why people hate EA. I was merely pointing out that EA is the kind of company the free market favors.
“I was merely pointing out that EA is the kind of company the free market favors.”
Have you seen EA’s stock price lately? They are being punished for their incompetence.
And they’re just a few PR jujitsu moves away from climbing out of it. Most of us may have laughed our asses off when they announced gaymer pride month and tried to paint the negative response to Mass Effect 3 as being tied to homophobia but for a lot of people that was the story. Their Zynga lawsuit is definitely going to be twisted as EA standing up for the little guy against a plagiarizing monster and they’ve still got a few big franchises to milk. Don’t worry, they’ll find another way to have people give in and throw money at them again.