Anybody else watching the news around E3 this year? All this xCloud and Stadia, and everyone harping on yet new even more powerful hardware coming next year has me something in a malaise and im having a hard time articulating it. Im not sure why either, I don’t own an XBox, and Im not going to bat an eyelash at Stadia.
Maybe its continuing to hammer home the message that gaming isn’t for me? Or im not willing to go down this cultural-technology fork in the road that is looming.
I know the thought of yet another gaming generation with yet more hardware upgrades is something im inclined to take a hard pass on.
Also this whole emphasis on the next generation of gaming chasing engagement. That word engagement. Ive got a negative association with it these days.
Also more independent studios like Double Fine getting bought up depress me. Like I really adored the gnu/linux port of Broken Age. I guess thats a kind of experience im not likely to be able to get from them in the future.
And like I get it. I got more gaming than ill need for the forseable future allready. But the industry is something ive enjoyed following for most of my life now, even if ive just been in a corner of it.
Im not sure its going to be enjoyable following for much longer.
I have been feeling similar for a while now. There is the occasional game I have interest in, but the direction towards “engagement” really turns me off. It’s like gamers attention is the goal, the commodity.
What I choose to do for fun shouldn’t be manipulated into turning me into an addict! Or worse, younger gamers. I have this kind of “big brother” feeling to all gamers younger than me, and I am nervous for them. 5 years from now… is Stadia all they’ll know? Will all games end up being like mobile lame-o games?
Also the focus and drive on better hardware is borderline environmental terrorism. We’ve got amazing hardware, it doesn’t need to get better for entertainment purposes. So much e-waste is generated.
I spent like 2 months playing Galaga, and it was awesome. Best gaming time I’ve had in years. It’s like 26kb!!! A game should be fun, not addictive.
This is also in part why I conceptually like Microconsoles assuming they aren’t disposable. Though no one has really been able to succeed at that game.
I’d be hard pressed to say when we turned the corner exactly. However at some point the industry stopped asking if games were fun. They ask now instead “does it drive user engagement?” This strikes me as pathological.
As budgets soar, and game failures become more prone to killing whole studios; I kind of find myself kinda wishing for a second great video game crash. Their are plenty of people and institutions I would hate to see go; but the industry as a whole could really use reboot.
I have no evidence to share, but I think it’s around the time of the iPhone release and subsequent rise of addictive mobile games. (and Facebook games, like Farmville). It was like a light bulb went off in the corporate gaming world, and then they started studying it and leveraging it across other platforms.
I DO seem to recall a lot of mobile UI designers in recent years express regret about laying the groundwork in addictive UX in mobile apps. Even from just a pure social networking (non gaming) standpoint. The whole pull down to refresh paradigm, ended up being analogous neurologically to pulling a lever and getting a surprise like from a slot machine.
@sudocurse and I were just talking about this. Did you see the outcry at Blizzcon last year when they announced Diablo as a mobile game? Fans were furious. If it’s a pay-to-get-energy game it’s gonna be terrible.
Tom Hall has been trying for the better part of a couple of decades now to get permission to do another commander keen game. He can’t seem to get enough attention without the IP to do a spiritual sequel as a crowdfunding thing, and he can’t seem to get ID Software / Zenimax interested in doing a game on their own or granting him a license.
For Commander Keen fans this has been a damn shame. But nothing too unusual. Considering the amount of IP which languishes.
Until they announced a cheap mobile game cash grab at E3. A mobile game with no relation to the original in anyway shape or form besides the look of the protagonists and the name.
It just seems like a shitty thing to do to Tom Hall. He was a god damn founder of ID.
The crowd just gets so insanely quiet. I’d read a couple posts from people who don’t normally go to blizzcon but are Diablo fans and so spent all this money to be there, because it was going to be a moment.
Commander Keen was easily the coolest and best game of my childhood. I ordered Ep 2 and 3 over the phone when I was 8 using my parents credit card. It was such a big deal to me. And the guy on the other end was really patient and kind, and in my readings I’ve found that often it was Tom himself answering phone orders.
