(Originally written for a feature magazine writing class at Millersville University. Dated 2/9/10)
Scott Freehoff
Feature Writer
MadWorld
No More Heroes
Flower
The World Ends with You
Frequency
Psychonauts
Jet Set Radio
The Mark of Kri
Gitaroo Man
Little King’s Story
How many games on this list do you recognize? How many of them have you played? Every year, beautiful, artistic, challenging, genre shifting games get overlooked by the mainstream audience despite glowing reviews from members in the industry.
So why is that?
“Why make something ‘great’ when ‘good’ sells better?” says Scott Ramsoomair, creator of VGcats, a popular, online web comic that focuses much of it’s material on the gaming industry.
Rafael Rivera, free-market game programmer and designer who formally worked for Gorilla Systems Corporation sits down to help elaborate further. “Casual games are a necessity; the market cannot survive simply on the hardcore fan base.” He admits immediately. “The issue occurs when the creative drive is lost in favor of simply making money.”
“Not everyone is doing it for ‘the art’; a good example would be The Sims. They don’t have to care about a Metacritic rating; they know who they’re selling too.”
“But casual audiences aren’t the only ones who continue to buy.” Rivera continues. “Quick-cash mentality causes the hardcore audience to become forgotten due to over-saturation of the market.”
The Casual Revolution
There have been several “Casual Revolutions” in the gaming community since the Magnavox Odyssey brought the consoles into the common household. The first one occurring two years after the North American Video Game Crash of 1983.
Atari 2600 (5200)
Bally Astrocade
ColecoVision
Coleco Gemini
Emerson Arcadia 2001
Fairchild Channel F System II
Magnavox Odyssey 2
Mattel Intelevision
Sears Tele-games System
TandyvisioN
Vecktrex
It's easy to forget there were so many...
All of these systems flooded the market, each with it’s own library of poorly created games pumped out by third party companies hastily financed. With no core fan base to build games to, and a massive over-saturation of the market, the industry was doomed to fail.
Then along came Nintendo, that home brand name everyone knows and loves. The Nintendo Entertainment System, (NES) cleverly referred to as an “entertainment system” to avoid association with consoles from two years earlier, helped revitalize the American video game industry, and set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game design to controller layout. In addition, with the NES, Nintendo introduced a now-standard business model of software licensing for third-party developers.
The industry took another turn in 1994, when Sony entered the field introducing the Playstation, a disc based video game console that fired a massive marketing campaign to reel in the slightly older, teenage demographic.
When the Nintendo Wii hit the market late 2006, it created a shift from video games being something “weird” to play past your teenager years, to something your Grandmother plays.
“Everyone owns a Wii.” Rivera points out. “To the point where I think sales will drop simply because there’s no one left to sell it to.”
The numbers don’t lie either. NPD reports that Nintendo’s Wii topped the charts all of 2007 and 2008, showing a sudden halt, and decline starting in March of 2009.
“How many of those people own Wii Sports? How many own more than two games? How many have turned their Wii on in the last week?” Rivera continues to vent his frustration. “There are great titles on the Wii, and yet no one buys them because for all intensive purposes the Wii is a fashion statement.” He lets loose a brief sigh. “It’s trendy to have a Wii, not to actually play it.”
Over-Saturation in the Market
If you play games even a little bit, you’re probably familiar with games like Rock Band, Halo, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, and the like.
Actually even if you don’t consider yourself a gamer, there is a strong chance you’ve heard of at least one, if not all of the titles in that last paragraph.
Not to say those games are bad though! Far from it actually. They are however, games that many in the industry would describe as “whatever stuck” when companies threw a crap-load of ideas at the drawling board.
“With games like Guitar Hero, it's certainly cemented the 'group party game' genre and revived the rhythm genre, or at least put it at the forefront of the industry.” Rivera says. “The problem is it’s almost certainly over-saturated the market.”
Guitar Hero 1-5, Rock Band 1-2, not to mention the spin-offs and expansions both games spawned including Lego Rock Band, the Beatles Rock Band, Metalica, Van Halen, and even the newly released DJ Hero. Even other massive game genres are entering the fray such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, with their Ride Board.
“Go to a Best Buy, there just isn’t room for all the boxes.” Rivera points out. “DJ Hero is a good game, but the price of $120, drove a lot of people away. (To compare, Guitar Hero was $70 when it launched, a regular game is $60) Tony Hawk Ride Feels like they created the controller first and came up with the game later."
“The Stores just don’t have room, massive price cuts happened to these games when their predecessors were on the horizon simply for the shelf space.” Rivera points back to the chart featuring the Wii’s sales. “And just like expected the sales are on the decline for these. A massive, expensive controller you buy once for a game? The people who have it are done buying it.”
Consider shelf space taken up for games that aren’t selling as well, massive resources be spent to create controllers that can be used for one game, people being charged twice as much, during a recession, when games are arguably too expensive as it is?
“Nothing good can come from it, that’s for sure.” Rivera warns.
Shovelware is just another problem facing the gaming industry. Shovelware, being a derogatory term used to describe software noted with more quantity then quality.
The Playstation 2 had one of the largest shovelware collections In the industry. You can see it for yourself, just walk into any Gamestop store in the mall and peek into their bargain bin.
Yet despite its unpopularity, companies still produce shovelware titles at low cost in the efforts of producing a quick buck.
“Shovelware is also the reason so many hardcore gamers dislike the Wii.” Rivera confirms. “Despite of having maybe some of the best titles on the market, the majority of their library is worthless.”
The amount of producing shovelware only grows with each passing year. An unfortunate trend that reflects the video game industry prior to 1983’s crash. “Unless they tone it down, this really isn’t going to end well for the industry.” Rivera smirks, clearly having given these warnings and speeches before.
Gaming on the Tube (Fading Relevance)
G4 TV, an American cable channel that launched in early 2002 was created with the original purpose of providing gaming information aimed more towards MTV’s demographics. In 2004, the company absorbed TechTV, a more general technology oriented channel with games regulated to a single show. This eventually led to the removal of nearly any technology related programming.
Unfortunately, video games alone cannot carry networks. Especially in this day and age with online news, RSS feeds, online game trailers, and internet blogs. There was a time, when gamers who wished to know what had happened at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), would need to wait for their monthly gaming subscription to show up at their door.
Nowadays people update their feeds while strolling through the convention floor. Live press conferences stream from various websites, game trailers appear online in minutes, and game demos are downloadable by the end of the day.
So if the big way to get gaming news from gaming networks disappears, what will G4 TV do? They will show stuff related to the internet of course. They fill their time slots with youtube clips, and other incredibly stupid things that belong on the internet. They show popular movies and cult hits in marathons, stuff which has no real significance to the gaming community.
In turn, G4 TV simply becomes an irrelevant, MTV parody mess, more concerned with keeping any consistent viewers instead of broadcasting to the gaming culture.
In 2003, Spike TV network launched the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards. The show has received heavy criticism from the gaming community since it started running, mostly from accusations that the awards are nothing but a popularity contest. In its first year, a two year-old port, Halo, won the award for best PC game of the year. More controversy arose in 2005 when nominations for Game of the Year included two titles that had not been released prior to filming the award show; both of which were panned by reviewers and gamers alike.
Another heavy criticism of the show has been the overall tackiness, with heavy emphasis on visual stunts instead of anything actually relevant to video games. Celebrities aimlessly being brought on who know very little of the video games being awarded and lame, cheap shot jokes at actual gamers expense. “I am shocked when an actually deserving game wins.” Rivera says. “I’m not insinuating that reviewers are paid off, but I believe that the larger the press surrounding the game helps boost it. So when an original Intellectual Property (IP) like The World Ends with You, with basically no advertising, wins best RPG of the year, I’m a bit taken aback.”
“I do think video game awards are a good idea.” Rivera continues “However the way it’s currently presented, it takes away from the games being treated as a legitimate medium for storytelling. Bioshock is a steampunk art deco themed game that tackles the themes of Ayn Rand and has some of the best “villains” and one of the greatest storytelling methods and realizations in a game to date. And how do they celebrate this triumph of storytelling, atmosphere, and imagery? Nude, body painted chicks.” Rivera shakes his head in disgust. “It’s like if Gran Torino was playing in a strip club.”
A Balance to Maintain
So where is the line between an over-saturated market of quick cash-in games, MTV knockoffs, and the unwavering loyalty from the men who dedicated their lives to saving the princess?
“The first thing I told you is that the industry cannot survive without the casual base.” Rivera sums up. “Because fresh blood is required to feed the cosmic space vampire that games are.”
“The new must be recruited, and then they must continue in the medium so that they will always support it. It’s why you see so much pressure when a new Mario or Zelda game is in production. Because there is a pedigree there for 20 years of service.”
The people who played Mario on the original NES are most likely going to be playing this new Mario when it comes out. But if people are only playing Wii sports… Think about it, how many of them are going to be playing video games 20 years from now?
“If the hardcore fans get disillusioned, they will eventually leave the medium. Then all the casual players who picked up the ‘flavor of the month’ won’t care when in a few years, Nintendo brings out their ‘Wii2 HD BBQ Remix Party Pak’.”
The gaming industry needs to strive harder to maintain this invisible balance that ultimately decides if the market survives or not.
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