Houston, Wii Have a Problem (Ideas for future games?)

Member Name: dj981

Product:	Ideas for future games?
Date:	09/12/08 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plenty of People Have Plenty of Good Ideas

Disadvantages: Nobody Seems to Like Them

Incredibly, I'm fast becoming bored with games. I've been posting many reviews lately, most of which in hindsight were heavily critical, nay whiney, even though the subject matter indisputably ticked all the boxes for a competent title within its own genre. Why? - Apathy. Games have stagnated. The eruption of creativity and innovation, which carried this new medium from two crude paddles and a handful of pixels to defining an entire generation of Western children, has hit a plateau. And it's our own stupid fault for largely shunning the industries' attempts at edifying us.

Games can be so much more than they are. Titles like Okami, Ico & Shadow of the Colossus are demonstrably artistic statements, driven by concept and aesthetic rather than the objective. Your primary goal became the experience rather than the pursuit of a conclusion. They made you 'feel' rather than simply react. They had an atmosphere quite unlike anything you'd experienced before. Fable II on the other hand, an immensely popular game I recently savaged, attempted to arouse some kind of sentiment but did it badly, reducing your encounters to merely interacting with a spreadsheet, exchanging 1's for 0's in a soulless grind to a conclusion. The experience meant nothing and thus had no impact on a personal level.

You know the sad thing? Fable II has outsold all the above mentioned (better) games combined. Hands up, how many of you have even heard of Okami? How many have witnessed the tender unspoken bond between Yorda and Ico? For me, the industry hit a turning point several years ago, where some mainstream developers started taking risks with their content as their creative canvas broadened. It has largely backfired, with each title being awarded the dubious 'cult' status. Critics raved about them in vain, championing this brave new digital world the innovators were trying to sculpt; a world where mainstream games could transcend the constraints of that very word and be respected as an artistic medium. It could have been the tentative baby steps of an exciting journey. The result of this failed experiment is what we see now: publishers invariably taking the safest option, merely adding another numeral onto an already successful concept and farming it out with a harsh deadline to a developer. I dread to think how many talented people haemorrhage out of this industry each year, as the thrill of churning out (and reviewing) titles like 'Generic War Shooter VII: There's Tits as Well' finally wanes.

The interface between creators and their audience is a big problem. The immediacy of music, literature, drama, and any other medium you care to mention is that a wide spectrum of aspiring artists can reach their audience directly and intimately comparatively quickly and cheaply. A musician can write, record and post his latest track on Youtube in a matter of days; game developers require a budget, months of research, and huge teams of specialized employees just to get a project off the ground. An indie film producer can attain cult status and further fame on a shoestring because good direction and dialogue transcend budgets; indie game designers are stymied on every level by their lack of financial firepower. A lone busker in a desolate subway can move you with a song the same way Radiohead can in front of 50,000. The same analogy won't hang on videogames quite so snugly. That's not to say there isn't a considerable homebrew gaming scene alive and well on the internet. Digital delivery has at least opened avenues for these titles to reach people, although sadly it's not and can never be the same as in other mediums for reasons already stated.

That's the key difference between games and other art forms: immediacy, or lack thereof.

People often blame money men for the dearth of creative originality in games. But they're just meeting the needs of their market on behalf of their shareholders. If, as consumers, we demanded more from console publishers they would in turn demand more from developers. It's hardly surprising that we don't see an Okami released every month when the huge development costs are barely met at the tills. Sadly, all the latent expressive potential in this industry and the new experiences locked within it will never be free from the yolk of corporate imperatives - at least until true innovation is met with enough of our enthusiasm to encourage more of it. We need to see a top ten section which doesn't read like the front cover of Nuts magazine before real positive change can occur, which means we first need to change our gaming habits.

But how do we break that depressing cycle when the majority of adult introduction to gaming is an afternoon of fist-waving in front of Wii Sports? These people may not care that Psychonauts or Portal ever existed, but maybe they would if they had the opportunity to play them? Maybe that would stop the depressing rot which is killing my passion for gaming. I'm not trying to be po-faced about this, there's a place for digital parlour games, but I think the prevalence of motion/rhythm-action titles in an attempt to draw new audiences can only dilute the message the industry is trying to promote: that games are for adults (and girls) too. That's irony there for you. Rather than dumbing down the controls so the same old crap we've been playing for decades can be re-peddled, how about providing this new audience with games that challenge emotionally and mentally? (I'm not thinking brain training here either, smartarse). I think the Wii is a successful but ultimately self-defeating concept, in the short term at least. Once my step-dad has played a few games of Wii-bowling, he's going to forget all about it and go back to reading in his spare time. Why? Because like most well-adjusted adults, he wants to be mentally engaged, and a few games of drunken Boxing-Day Wii-bowling will not suddenly rouse his subconscious urges to role-play a seven foot space marine.

The Wii may well have made games temporarily more acceptable, more mainstream, and more family orientated, but we already have Monopoly to break the festive tedium and stop Granddad falling asleep. Where's the long-term gaming fan base going to derive from? People who have cash and will spend it? People who are sorely needed to diversify the software on the shelves? I'm genuinely concerned that Nintendo will simply continue to push games as a fashionable alternative to pictionary or an extension of the gym rather than a pastime that can be genuinely and uniquely rewarding.

2005's Fahrenheit gave a glimpse of one direction games could develop in the future - an amalgamation of Hollywood thriller narrative and straightforward controls anyone could interact with. Guess what? It didn't really sell. Guess what? There hasn't been anything successful on console like it since. Many commentators believe that as the Joe Six-Pack gamer hurtles toward 30, there'll somehow be an epiphany where this kind of experience becomes en vogue; a kind of natural progression toward maturity which need not require the input of new gamers. I can't see this happening. Joe Six-Pack gamer grew up with Wip3out, Tomb Raider and Fifa Soccer, and his dietary requirements haven't varied much since. Waiting for this demographic to transform the industry is like waiting for a weightlifter to take up ballet. If anything, they propagate the myopia afflicting release schedules, not improve matters.


How do I honestly see the industry developing? I believe it's going to come from the generation of gamers succeeding me, empowered and inspired by the dawn of mainstream internet collaborative gaming. The advent of titles we see now such as Spore and LittleBigPlanet are interesting hints at how user-generated content could solve the problem: by making the player the creator as opposed to the audience. Quite how this concept moves on from users simply spamming a game universe with new furniture a la Second Life is for the industry to work out, but this opens up innumerable possibilities. How about taking Fahrenheit's serial killer/detective concept and turning it over to a team of online detectives, each with their own responsibilities? The killer could operate in the midst of other (opted-in) players simply milling about in a massively multiplayer online universe. Different game variants and genres like these could be coded into a larger framework of online players who can be part of the world but not necessarily part of the game. The drama and emotional impact would then come from real people interacting in real situations, and that carries more weight than anything a developer can code from a keyboard. Sony's Home feature for the Playstation 3 could be the catalyst for that world, but its realisation is light years away.

I'm not really sure why I wrote this. I think it's because I know what the humble video game can be but is consistently denying itself. In the long term, maybe somebody somewhere will commit something profoundly beautiful to a disc that everyone will want and everyone will buy, transforming the esteem that games are held in universally. Maybe.

In the short term, maybe I'll get my Playstation down from the loft and play Ico again.

Summary: Games are so much more than many believe them to be. Dig a bit deeper.