Gaming's Great Decline

It doesn't take a genius to see that the gaming industry has begun to make huge changes this generation. For some it's only getting better; casual games such as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and FIFA are being released once every year and are causing other companies to shape their products around these simple formulas. Gaming is becoming less of the hobby it once was, taken up by the dedicated and the enthusiasts, and instead is an easily accessible pastime. It's not just casual gamers that are being appealed to, either. Last month, the family-friendly Playstation Move accessory was released, and we now await the monolithic 500 million dollar release of Microsoft's Kinect, something that promises to make the humble Xbox 360 a home entertainment system that can be used by any and all. Regardless of the cynicism of many, I know there are a lot of families who will be happy to have a machine that needs nothing more than your voice and body to play games and movies, and in that respect I'm glad many minds will be opened to the prospect of gaming. However, it doesn't stop me looking at my old consoles and games and think, 'remember when companies made games for gamers?'

Take a look at who is, effectively, in charge of the gaming industry. One on hand is Nintendo; they tend to make games that are small, fun and suitable for everyone. This is fair enough, this has been their status quo for a good 15 years now. Mario, Yoshi, Kirby, Pokemon - these are kid-friendly franchises and people have become accustomed to them being Nintendo's staple. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, aren't the same. They've been the ones to release games (supposedly) on par with PC games; more mature, more advanced and cutting-edge. Despite this, they have a major difference to Nintendo in that they are not gaming-centred companies. Sony makes electronic hardware in countless different categories, and Microsoft have made themselves the most successful software company in the world. These giants aren't just in pursuit of you, the gamer, getting the best experience, they're a business out for profit and will go in whatever direction brings in the green. The only surprise about Kinect and Playstation Move is how long it took for them to catch on to the family gaming market, considering the incredible sales of the Wii.

Taking a look at the movers and shakers in the production of games is even more grim. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision and aptly nicknamed 'the Hitler of the games industry' has openly admitted that he intends to endorse only franchises that are easily annualized and milked to the last penny. The results of this plan are evident and, most unfortunately, successful. Activision has published the Tony Hawk's skating games (14 releases), Call of Duty (11 releases, now annualized), Guitar Hero (12 releases, not including DS ports) and the Spyro games (13 releases). The quality of these games is no big issue, because the sad fact is that people will buy them regardless. For an example, one must look no further than Modern Warfare 2, Activision's diamond jewel. The focus here is cliched military FPS action, with emphasis on online multiplayer. This game did nothing new and has not advanced the genre in terms of mechanics one bit, but scored the biggest entertainment release in history and maintained the 'Most played game on Xbox Live' title all the way from it hitting the store shelves until Halo: Reach took the crown 10 months later. Why? Because it's a game people know, a safe option, one that doesn't require a great deal of thought or effort. Cheap, thrill-a-minute titles such as this are now everywhere, leaving plenty of thoughtful and original efforts in the dust.

Lastly is the issue of value for money, and this affects all gamers: casual, core and hardcore. We've become complacent with a £40 and $60 price tag per title, as this has been standard pricing for many a year now, and for the most part this has been reasonable considering the quality and playtime games usually offer. However, think about how much money this is relative to other entertainment mediums. Seeing a movie at a cinema is about £6, and about £10 to buy it on DVD. Even in Blu-Ray quality, prices won't usually exceed £20. A movie's average length is about 2 hours, and you'll probably watch it once or twice. So it strikes me as funny when I notice that the average length of a modern game is six to seven hours, and the rest of the content is online-only multiplayer which some players may not have access to. A particularly despicable act made by Activision was the pricing of the Modern Warfare 2's map packs, being priced at 1200msp and £10.79 for a meager 3 new maps and 2 remakes. Capitalising on the release price of the full game being £10 more than standard pricing, I can't help but think people are being given far less than they pay for. I could say the same for many other games, too, that are being released despite severely lacking where it counts. Alpha Protocol is a game fans waited 4 years for, only for it to turn out as a sub-standard, buggy RPG that looks and plays like it was made for the Playstation 2. Mafia II, a game that suffered delay after delay, ended up as a game that offered even less freedom than its predecessor, and was simply a 12 hour story that was hardly good enough to replay. Even the recently released Fallout: New Vegas, which I am currently enjoying, is so filled with bugs that I can hardly believe it has been playtested. 

The worst of it all is that no matter how much it pains me, and how much I write and complain and promise that I'll never fund such terrible fan service, at the end of the day it is the gamer population that makes the difference. The gamer population: a subculture that existed once, that cared about games. My £40 is a drop in the ocean, an ocean that is now hugely comprised of people who think 'multiplayer or no buy', who think Call of Duty is as good as games get, who think 'if I haven't heard of it, it's not good'. I fear that the direction of the industry is in the hands of those who are perfectly willing to ruin it.