10. Sequelitis

Yes, the industry has gotten sick with it. Following Hollywood tit for tat video games, for the most part, have become wholly un-original. Before you come stampeding my way with torches, let me explain. I don’t mean original as in a new genre or way to play a game (ducking Wii-motes). I mean original as in a new IP (Intellectual Property). What happened to getting excited over new characters? All of the gaming icons we know were once new. Instead of creating new characters, we get the same ones for the fifth, sixth, and eleventh installments. I subscribe to the financial reasoning of betting on a name that people know, but it also smacks in the face of how that character became popular in the first place. No! I don’t want to play as Dante anymore, at least not for a while. I’m tired of hopping around with Mario, can I get a new character? Everyone talks about how this year was so great for gaming, but virtually every game on the Best Sellers list is a sequel – GTAIV, MGS:4, DMC 4, GHWT, Rock Band 2, GOW2, Res: 2, Mario Kart, etc etc (You know these titles so well I can abbreviate them) How about a year without any sequels and totally new IP? Wouldn’t that be refreshing…

9. Too Many Sku’s

Sweet Jeebus. I know the consumer likes choice but this is going way over the top. I’ll give it to the Nintendo peeps. They’ve stuck the course for a pretty long time now. 1 Price, 1 System. (But we all know the skittles colors are coming. When? I’ll tell you right now. When the system starts to loose steam. “Introducing the Wii in your favorite color to match your carpet, wall, or rainbow brite shoes!” Mark my words, but I digress…) We’ve had to deal with multiple sku’s this gen more so than any other time in history. If I was a clueless parent walking into a store I know what I would do. GET THE CHEAPEST ONE. Guess which one that happens to be? (until recently) Yup the Nintendo Wii. I just single handedly explained the phenomenon. Will little Timmy and Sam be happy with their Wii? You bet ya. Until they go to Justin’s house and see Resistance 2, or Mark’s house and see Gears 2. Then Timmy isn’t so happy and asks why didn’t he get a PS3 or XBOX360. The sole answer was Microsoft and Sony confused the hell outta his parents. Good thing we’ve past the days where you didn’t know whether the one you bought had HDMI, a hard drive, or was wireless (have we?). But the damage has already been done. I don’t want to choose between a $250, $300, $500 version of a system. Because I know the cheap one will be gimped. And those prices were crazy to begin with. Which one do you have? The 20, 40, 60, 80, or 160 gig PS3? The arcade, basic, pro, Halo 3 edition or Elite?

8. No Mascots

Who decided that platform gaming was dead? Who? Please tell me? The icons of the genre sold hand over fist and generally garnered great reviews. Sure we had the duds like Blinx and Vexx, but that hasn’t stopped endless versions of nameless, soul less, super soldier shoot em ups from coming out. Who killed the platform genre? Tell me so I can hunt them down. Not only were these games fun (and what I call a game and not a real life super realistic war/flight/driving simulator), they also gave birth to some memorable stories. Of course you had Mario and Luigi… but I’m gonna take the time to give a shout out to all the other doughboys. Sonic, Bonk, Conkers, Jak, Ratchet, Sly, Conker, Banjo, Spyro, Tak, Ty, Crash, Rayman, Raz and a bunch of others that I can go on for ages. R.I.P. and No i’m not gonna go back on my word about sequels, don’t bring these guys back. Give us new ones! They were all new at one point!

7. Neglected Genres

Once upon a time if I were a gamer I could got into a store and have a multitude of quality choices of genre. With consolidation and the inexplicable killing of genres, the pickens are slim for some out there. You already know how I feel about platformers, but other genres have been shortchanged this go around as well. Top of my mind? RPG’s! Now I’m not the most super duper role playing gamer. I literally got put onto RPG’s (other than Zelda but thats another story) with Final Fantasy 7. Square shot to my radar with the then (and still in some ways) awesome CG cutscenes. Now-a-days with the graphics on these powerhouses supposedly all the rage… why can’t we get some good rpg loving? Final Fantasy 13 you say? Once again Sweet Jeebus! I remember when Final Fantasy’s came out every year. Now? It’ll be lucky if it makes this gen! 2010? Aint that when the new systems are coming out? Damn straight a new Nintendo system will be out by then, and Microsoft won’t be far behind. But RPG’s don’t = Final Fantasy. There were many other gems from years past; the Chrono’s, Xenogears, Persona, Kingdom Hearts, .hack even! and many more. To date the best “Next-Gen” RPG has been Lost Odyssey. Come on guys give us the EPICS!

*Note maybe I should call it Japan RPG’s because America is trying it’s best to hold it down with the likes of Fable, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3, but we all know where the RPG kings come from.

6. Multi-Platform

I have to admit that back when the original XBOX came out I was a big fan of multi-platform. because there was a clear advantage. The game was almost always better on the XBOX. Better graphics, sound, the whole 9 compared to the PS2 and GameCube. So Multi-Plat was actually single plat for me. But something happened on the way to making sense. The Nintendo version is still the crap of the bunch (Don’t get Mad, Get Money © – Grey) the XBOX version is usually better than the PS3 (Yes they are, don’t hate. Just speaking the facts) and you know what happens. The quality of the whole shibang has gone to shit. The days of devs mastering a hardware platform and squeezing out something so amazing you can’t think straight are gone. Replaced by unruly deadlines and having to construct a title that will not only work on multiple consoles, but pc’s, and handhelds, and phones, and billboards at sporting events. So the quality testing that used to ensure the best game possible is always cut because a date has to be hit. I can go into the movie tie ins and all that but I’m not. I’ll just say all the consoles have dropped the ball in bringing truly original titles to their systems that you can’t get anywhere else. They’ve bagged sequels and went straight to the bank. We as consumers should revolt!

5. Big Publishers

Can’t beat em, Buy em! What started with EA trying to singlehandedly purchase the industry. Continued with a lot of indie houses getting scooped up by larger entities. Whether it be a big company like EA, Universal, or Take Two or going “First Party”, these smaller shops can’t survive without the publishing and marketing muscle those alliances afford. Along the way, gone is the creativity and everything becomes about the bottom line. Want to create a compelling single player narrative? “Where’s the online? People love online, so add a deathmatch!” Want to create a new ip with a totally new character and setting? “Hmmmm let’s insert character B and make it part 3″ Man there’s no answer for this…

4. XBOX Live Marketplace

Microsoft gets kudos for the XBOX Live experience and online matchmaking and stability and updates and all. But micro-transactions? Come on. I don’t want to pay ANY money for icons and wallpapers. It’s just decoration that allows me to show affinity for your game! Why should I have to pay for it. God forbid, I can’t even preview it before i purchase! Want a different gun? Buy it. Want a new level? Buy it. Games not done but need to hit retail? Put a patch and a new multiplayer map and get users to Buy it. Nuff said.

3. Nintendo Conservatism

Some of you may remember my post on Nintendo a few months back. Same issues. Nintendo bring the noise to reward your loyal fans for being just that. Also work on a cure for the acute case of sequelitis that you have and you’ll be straight.

2. Home

Where do I start? Ever head of Second Life? Nope? Well let me clue you in. A novel idea that was overrun by corporate nonsense and became the defacto advertising coin term. “What are you doing in this new platform, we have to target gamers! They all play Second Life! We must have a presence! Let’s build stores and experiences in the game! We’ll make FaFillion Dollars! © – Dr. Evil” Except they built it but the gamers didn’t come. For every person who enjoys time-consuming games like Second Life, there are about 10,000 that wouldn’t even look at it.

But some big wig at Sony, right about the time when they were getting ready to announce that the Playstation 3 was going to be the mothership to take everyone to Utopia said, “We can make a better Second Life!” The entertainment hub that everyone will die to be a part of. “And the ADVERTISERS WOULD COME RUNNING! We can make FaFIllion Dollars!” Guess what? Yup. For every 1 person who enjoys time consuming games like Second Life, there are about 10,000 that wouldn’t even look at it. Wait you just disabled voice chat? WTF WTF WTF (me texting “What the Franks!”)

Quote from Sony – “The reason for this maintenance is to ease the difficulty some people are having accessing PlayStation Home due to the high demand for the service.”

High Demand for the service? By golly you basically promised that it would be the Mothership to Gaming Utopia you better bet that I wanna check it out! But you’ve gimped me! I can’t even tell others how bad this sucks (Wait maybe that’s the real reason chat is disabled? hmmmm) and its just another example of nothing to do on the system… where are the games…. Don’t keep telling me to wait wait, it’s been 2 freaking years!

And last but not least…

1. The So Called Casual Market

What the flip is a casual gamer? Either you play games or you don’t. You don’t casually play them. Casual def. – without or seeming to be without plan or method. free-and-easy: natural and unstudied. not showing effort or strain. hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough. occurring from time to time. All of those franking definitions are spurring the downfall of our beloved hobby. Along the way developers got confused about what casual meant. Translated it into – EASY. Let’s not make people think, let’s give them unlimited health and allow them to never miss a jump. Let’s make everything we need to interact with shiny and add a neon arrow pointing to it that says, “Push me. Press circle to push. If you can’t find circle then just tilt the controller. If you can’t tilt the controller in the proper direction, just wait a moment and the button will push itself.”

Granted there were always “easy” games. There were always hard games. Almost everyone exclaims, “I Love Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo!” but how many of you actually beat that game? It was hard as SHIT! Oh I love Pac-Man! Again hard as SHIT! My favorite game of all time is Donkey Kong! Again hard as SHIT! Dude remember Double Dragon or Contra? Yea I remember… Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start! Why? Because the game was flipping Hard and you got your 30 men.

Did any of that change your affinity for those games? I would reckon no. But developers have decided that its time to treat everyone with kids gloves. WAIT! I was a kid when I played those games and I still rocked! In a movement to get the Older demo (our parents 50+) they’ve actually made games TOO EASY. During a time where the next generation (players under 12yrs old) are actually better at playing games than we ever were (for the most part).

I am calling to arms all the gamers that are tired of being labeled “Hardcore” or “Casual” because that’s just a bunch of marketing speak. There were always people who played a certain game endlessly until they maxed out the score and always people who played only when the opportunity presented itself. We don’t need “titles” and we sure as hell don’t need companies tailoring games to us. That’s what you have different difficulties for!

There you have it, DaveDaGamer’s Top 10 Reasons the Video Game Industry is in peril.

With the console market already a very crowded place with three different consoles serving the needs of three (mostly) different demographics, what would happen if a fourth company released another console? It seems like the answer simply would be that the market isn’t big enough for four consoles and it would be destined to fail. However, what if that company was already one of the biggest companies in gaming, and that already has a firm hold on a sizable percentage of the gaming industry? What if that company was Activision Blizzard?

Around since the late 1970s, and founded by defectors from Atari, Activision currently sits atop the list of third party publishers, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger everyday. Since the completion of their merger with Vivendi earlier this year, the moniker Activision now adorns multiple franchises at the top of their genres – “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty,” “Tony Hawk,” and the biggest of all “World of Warcraft,” just to name a few. Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by this one publisher.

What would happen if this time next year, as the industry was getting poised and ready for the holiday deluge, the sequels to all the games mentioned above were only available for one console – Activision’s? Their catalog might not offer the depth and diversity as the PS3’s, or the Xbox 360, but it would be the only place to get your fix for “Guitar Hero 5,” “Tony Hawk 10,” and “Starcraft 2.” They’re all quality games and they would only be found on one exclusive platform. Sure, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would have a wealth of other games from other publishers to fall back on, but when the biggest piece of the pie is gone, is there going to be enough left for everyone to share?

In addition to their library of franchises they would, no doubt, also have the capacity to produce their own, new, franchises as well. After all, there are ten separate development studios under them, including such heavy hitters as, Infinity Ward, Neversoft, and Raven. These studios would be able to increase their capacity from their current one title per year (or every other year), to more than that, because they would only have to commit their time to developing for one platform, instead of three separate ones. It might even encourage additional creativity for studios to venture outside their comfort zones. Red Octane to develop something that isn’t a rhythm game. TreyArch could make an RPG. Infinity Ward could make a platformer.

What if this mystery console had a low price point, and could offer great graphics? What if this mystery console was appealing enough to encourage at least a limited amount of third party support? If it launched with a host of great, and established, first party titles as well as third party support, and you could actually have a viable contender. When the 3DO launched in 1994 it was able to get commitments from a host of third party developers – everyone from EA to Konami (granted that didn’t really pan out too well), if this console could pull in one EA or Ubisoft, it might be able to compete.

I fully realize that there is very little chance of this actually happening, for a whole assortment of different reasons, but it would be a huge shake-up of how the entire industry operates. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would no longer be able to look to Activision titles to help move their consoles. It might be too late this console life cycle to happen, but, who knows what the future holds. All those analysts predicting a converging console future might need to start considering a wild card.

Some upcoming Activision Blizzard titles and ongoing franchises:
World of Warcraft
Guitar Hero
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Call of Duty
Spiderman
James Bond
Tony Hawk
Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Geometry Wars
Project Gotham

-written by 2.0