Seaborgium's Mobile Dilemma.
I'm not going to discuss the recent personal issues between members. Instead, I'm going to discuss a certain post.
The article is badly written, using mostly second hand quotes and reports.
It's written informally for audiences who don't spend hours a day reading through encyclopedias and aspire to become verbally overwrought. I prefer this style of writing as it makes the article more interesting and personal.
Platforms are changing every few years now, and every time a new one comes out, game developers tend to just dish out the same old first person shooters, just with shinier graphics and on a better platform. The lack of creativity in the gaming industry is dire. It's simply not woth it to spend over fifty dollars to buy a new version of a game you pretty much already own, just with better graphics.
AAA developers/publishers like to play it safe. They are in business to make money, and they don't like spending money without some acknowledgement they will get a successful return. It's security, something natural to the human condition. Flashy visuals are eye candy that marketing drools over, and so do the "fans". The hype-train is what makes people want to spend that $50.
Furthermore, there is no "lack of creativity". What there is happens to be a lack of respect for indie developers and the incredible effort they go through to produce interesting titles.
People will realize this and stop buying platform games.
No, they won't. That's like saying "People will realise McDonalds is making them fat, and they will stop buying it."
Phones provide cheap, easily distributable games and levels the playing field because you don't have to spend millions of dollars for graphics and sound that really don't effect the gameplay if your making a game for a phone.
They also offer limited controls, much less visibility due to the sheer amount of people trying to "cash-in" on the market, and much less credibility as far as "serious games" go.
People nowadays have the attention span of fleas, but are sluggards and do not have the patience that insects possess. We want cheap, easily consumable, OK games. Basically we want the game equivalent of McDonalds.
Getting bored of games =/= Short attention spans. People are viewing very predictable patterns in the games they play, and as such they either require deeper gameplay, or just more frequent bouts of stimuli, which only increases the problem.
Saying "People want OK games" is essentially insulting the intelligence of everybody. I'm offended as a game developer. Please don't make such general, broad and insulting remarks when you're highly incorrect.
Almost all the games are first person shooter of fighting games with no integrated plot that give us a jolt of pleasure by blowing some computer generated goons head to pieces. The level of hand holding for RPGs is dire.
You complained about poor writing skills from the article, and yet you could barely string the first sentence together?
No, there is no majority of FPS games. They're more prominent in AAA titles because they have a marginally wider market-share, but the same people who play FPS games also play many, many other genres as well. The jolt of pleasure comes from success in a challenge, not from seeing the blood spurt out.
Hand-holding is present in all genres. It's about trying to get newer players in the games easier, so they can attract a wider audience and make more money. It's based on a fallacy (that new gamers are idiots who can't learn things for themselves), but there's a twisted logic working there.
Back in the eighties you had rpgs with such integrated plot that you had to keep a notebook to keep track of all the plot threads(having played many games from the eighties I know.) Nowadays no one would make game like that.
Are you trying to impress people? You're assuming we've not played such games either. You're also assuming that every title in the eighties was of high standards. I can assure you, that's not the case.
Back then, there were less resources to work with, so the player was forced to have a vivid imagination to compensate. These days, we've been given massive increases in resources, and as such we've yet to find the perfect way to balance it all.
Since the quality of game play isn't much better than what you get on phones, it wouldn't surprise me if people started only doing phones.
So you're saying:
- ALL Mobile Games don't feature quality gameplay
- Desktop/Console Games == Mobile Games
- People will automatically shift from Desktop/Consoles to Mobile, because they're going to be playing the same games anyway ??
Okay.
I hope this guy is wrong, but unless game developers start innovating, stop talking down to plays, and make engaging games with well designed gameplay, this is probably what will happen.
Talking down to players is bad, because people assume you're a bit of a c*** for talking down to them.
Developers talking to players...not always a good idea. It's good to gain perspective, but players lack the critical understanding that developers have and can frequently suggest things that would only harm the game. They're great with feedback as far as bugs and sometimes features, but you need to have a strong objective focus to be able to listen to them.
You're making a lot of uninformed assumptions based on your own experiences; exactly what a younger me did. Unfortunately, that doesn't fly around here. Try again later.
13 Comments
Recommended Comments
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now