Call of Duty fanboys, eat your heart out
Whenever people find out that I’m a part of a classic gaming website, it’s almost guaranteed they will at some point ask “Why?”
Now first of all don’t get me wrong. I’m not some sort of classic gaming Nazi who doesn’t play any new games, and claims they’re all rubbish and have nothing on the older games where the gameplay was at its pinnacle of importance. It’s far from the truth. I’m a person that very much looks forward to the Steam holiday and Halloween sales and suffers with the all familiar Buyer’s Remorse as a result of having Gabe Newell empty my bank account. I also own a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but admittedly I play them very rarely.
I believe today we live in a video game society where games are simply cranked out, one after another, with very little effort between releases. In my opinion for a combination of financial gain and to maintain their position of popularity in the market. Two prime examples of this today are Call of Duty and FIFA, two franchises that continue to spawn new games in order to push down any threats of competition. It’s sad in my eyes that arguably better games, such as Battlefield 3 (of course, this is all down to opinion, but I think there’s something wrong with you if you think MW3 even comes close to BF3) are pushed down simply due to the fanbases that these franchises maintain.
This sort of market domination by specific franchises has always been somewhat the case, and will continue to do so until something spectacular somehow knocks it off its pedestal. Or it does something that spontaneously kills its own franchise. Command & Conquer with Command & Conquer 4 is a dramatic example of this.
I find these games, due to their specific purpose to be released and developed quickly in order to stay ahead of the competition, rely solely on graphical content and flashy cinematics, as well as cheap recycled gameplay that people still somehow enjoy. I don’t think this was always the case with older games. Sure some games are bound to be similar, such as Sonic the Hedgehog was always, for the most part – discounting some particularly rubbish titles, a fast flowing platformer with the same game mechanics – but there was a higher degree of versatility. Not all platformers were the same, Kirby, Super Mario and Bubsy were all very different and enjoyable respectively. The problem is today a lot of games fall under the category of “generic shooter” or “generic party title” – meaning that the market leaders such as Call of Duty and EA Sport titles can just continue to grow unchecked.
There’s always going to be innovative new titles, Mirror’s Edge – in my opinion – was such a different title. But it was destined to fall into obscurity as people just continue to demand the same old thing with reluctance to change. Which I understand, since I’m one of them sort of people who doesn’t particularly like to be forced to use or adapt to new things, such as a new operating system or control scheme.
For me, I can navigate through a whole library of games for the SEGA Mega-Drive (Genesis) or Super Nintendo and pick out so many different, interesting titles. I can’t really do that today on the Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii without pulling out another typical shooter, party, racing or sport title.
If things weren’t about cranking out new games every year to boost revenues and popularising their franchises. Things would be better. Hence why there is so much innovation in indie games today, as these smaller developers don’t concentrate their thoughts in the direction of profit, but rather on how to break into the difficult to enter video game market and give players a reason why their game is different, and why it’s worth their money.
In conclusion (tl;dr) – with some exceptions, the majority of games today are focused around visuals and/or recycled multiplayer mechanics and ways on getting increasing amounts of money from the user’s pockets – rather than gameplay and innovation being the primary focus.
