Okay, bear with me. I know that this is a rather broad topic, but as a person who's been playing games since he was 5 (giving me 20 years experience), I have a lot I feel bitter about. Since about 2004 or 2003(I am honestly not sure which) to the present, watching the video game industry has left me a bit sour. I'm not saying that nothing good happened in this time span, but for the most part, I am left disappointed by the direction the industry has taken.

Now, this seems like a difficult topic to discuss, and by all rights it is, so I am going to focus on three things I feel have been the chief offenders to me, personally. The list may be different for you, but this is not your c-blog, so feel free to argue what you hate there. Any rational discussion on my points, I will welcome. That being said, here are the sources of my hate; shooters, multi-player focus, and the need for “innovation.”



Shooters can be fun, interesting games that can keep you occupied for hours at a time. However, if there is one thing I learned from gaming in the 90's, there can be too much of a good thing. Back then, a little game called Street Fighter II came out and shook things up. It was not long before other companies tried to cash in with various degrees of success. I love fighting games, and for a while there, they looked like a dying breed. Once the 16-bit era ended and the focus shifted mostly onto the Playstation, the 2D fighter became some kind of horrid fossil that people didn't want to talk about. That, and the limited RAM on the Playstation made it hard to port arcade hits like the Marvel vs Street Fighter series to home. 3D fighters were lack luster and felt clunky to me. It wasn't until Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast that I felt like someone had got it right finally. Now there are good fighters again and the market is seeing less and less crap fighters.



I bring this up, because the market seems to be flooded with first and third person shooters currently. Most of them follow a similar formula; create a gritty, often foul mouth protagonist who borders on being an anti-hero, have him face off against legions upon legions of bullet fodder, use the same weapons every other game uses with one or two original ones thrown in, and always leave the game open for the possibility of a sequel. Toss in some muted, gritty colors (the grayer/browner the better), lots of pretty explosions, and a barely there plot and you've got yourself a game. Not necessarily a good one, but a game people will buy none the less because they are uninformed and the box art looked cool, or they just wanted to shoot something. To me, this is more than disappointing. Has the industry forgotten about its past mistakes, or are they too busy trying to one up each other that they can't see that eventually the bubble will burst and all these high budget shooters will be recognized as derivative drivel?

I can't say for certain, but eventually the bubble will burst and true fans of shooters will be left aching for a good one.



Of course, lately a game is not a game with out an online multi-player mode. Now I can understand the appeal of this. Many of us had at least one or two friends we would play 2 player games with growing up and long for that feeling. Many of us no longer have that near by friend to back us up, so online gaming seems like a wonderful solution. In many ways, I agree, but there are two major problems with it. The first being that people as a whole are complete assholes online.



Let's face it, its hard to schedule an adult life so that you and a friend in another time zone will regularly have time to play a game with each other. Things come up, people forget, and a lack of physical presence can get in the way of committing to a regular schedule. You are then left to play with the hostile hordes of the internet. Obi-Wan was wrong about Mos Eisley Cantina, as you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the internet (yes, I realize I am posting this online, smart ass). Its doesn't take long while playing an online game for you to find someone who makes you lose whatever shreds of hope for humanity and the future of our world, especially with the advent of voice chat in games. Given enough time you will hear some of the most racist, sexist, ignorant things you will ever hear that will have nothing to do with the game you are actually playing. I really don't have a way to end this particular rant other than by saying some parents need to put their kids into therapy.



As for the other aspect of the multi-player focus that bothers me is the fact that many games are looked down upon for having little or no multi-player experience. This greatly confuses me, because there used to be a large market for single player games. You don't need anyone else to play with, you don't need the internet, and you don't have a twelve year old spouting racial slurs at you. This push for multi-player gaming is so bad that is a console game that are nothing but multi-player (in the form of Shadowrun). Even games with deep stories and heavy focus on gameplay have been criticized for lacking multi-player (BioShock, for example). I find it ridiculous, as someone who would very much like to view games as an art form that multi-player should be such a selling point.



Finally, I move to the one thing that I feel is utterly ridiculous. Innovation has become the buzz word to use when selling games and asking for more out of them. I've heard the word so many times lately that I want to vomit. Granted, some games are truly innovative. Take Protal for example; it's a quirky, stylish first person puzzle game that many people would think is a first person shooter at first glance. Aside from that, off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single game that actually is innovative that has used this buzz word. I see it a lot when people attempt to describe Mirror's Edge, but to me, it looks like a 3D platformer with the camera lodged in the character's head (which for many third person platformers, happens if you get too close to a wall) and some pretty graphics (let me add, thank GOD there is color. The gameplay footage I have seen looks like someone really wanted a Prince of Persia game with out all the complicated fighting, puzzle solving, and teen angst. Granted, I say this as someone who has not tried the game, so if I got my hands on it it could blow my mind. As it stands right now, however, the only innovative feature I can see in this game is that for the first time in the history of first person gaming, the protagonist will be able to climb walls and hang onto ledges. Of course, its only a matter of time before someone sees things and tries the through a grunting hulk with guns into the mix.

So there you have it. I feel I have wasted enough of your time, as well as my own, ranting about how the industry has got me angry. I welcome serious discussion on these points, and look forward to reading your own little letters of hate. See you in the comments.