old.Tohtori
FH is my second home
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2004
- Messages
- 45,210
It's often said, by several people and i'm betting many of us has thought of it, that there's so much crap games going around. Oh long gone were the days of epic gaming, substituted with the monotonous paste that is the 2k game industry.
Common viewpoint, i'd like to think.
I'm not going to go into the whole milking cow thing, or the publishing dates, or other such boring things that we all know contribute to fast produced games with only money in mind. There's plenty of that discussion anytime there's a new NFL/NHL/FIFA/HALO/etc around.
The main thing here is illusion, or delusion on another hand. The amount of good games hasn't really declined, but there are two reasons why it seems that way.
1: The sheer amount of games.
When you're looking for a diamond in a dungheep, it's easy when the dungheep is in your backyard, barely reaching to your ankles. This was the case in the olden golden days. Good games were easy to pick out, as it was most likely a case of 1 in 10. In less fortunate parts of the world, with crappy game stores, if someone was lucky enough to even have a crappy one at all, the nmber would be closer to 1 in 5.
Some even had a healthy "i'll play what i get" situation, where you play the things you happen to have around.
These days, i dare say, the game industry is larger then the movie industry, if looked at from a company amount and the amount of titles launched per year. So, the dungheep is up to our necks, past the forehead and we could live inside it. Finding those gems is a harer job by the day.
Not to mention, there's soon more gamestops and game dispenseries then starbucks.
This ofcourse would be a lovely situation back in the day, a plethora of games to choose from, you could play 24/7/365 and still not manage to go through every game. If it weren't for the second part.
2: Teh Internets.
Back in the day, when gaming was for nerds and not that popular, you'd be lucky if you had a little flop of a magazine in your mailbox(that's...an actual box for mails, not that icon on your screen) to tell you what games rock'em and what games suck more then the mandatory paris hilton sex joke. These magazines in turn had to pick&choose between this game and that, have some good reviews so the magazine isn't all about fails and all in all, they probably reviewed 2-3 bad games. That was your media. Not a really covering expose on the crapNES of games now is it?
Friends ofcourse shared their experiences, but rarely you didn't say that you bought this and that crappy game, but instead told people to try this, or most likely lend them a copy to play 'cause it was just that awesome. The same picky&choosy mentality of the magazines continued there.
So what changed, excluding the previously mentioned rise of game amount? For one, gaming became popular. The more popular it is, the ore media there is. That didn't eliminate the pocky&choosy mentality though, especially with big name magazines more then not taking a bit of a payday to feature big games.
Main change was, and if you read the part after 2 this is not a surprise, Teh Internets. Suddenly everyone had a voice and the voice of teh internets is nothing if not brutal. You will hear endless of rages about bad game this, bad game that, this sucks, that sucks and a rather e-famous person even makes a..well...living from telling what sucks in games(check zero punctuation if you already haven't). Rate the game sites are everywhere, reviews are put out by the thousands and maybe the biggest intenet contribution to the seeming amount of crappy games is this; information.
It's because you know the amount of games out there, that you can call on the size of the dungheep over your gem.
I'm going to leave out the larger rant about why crap games are good for the industry and say it short; they make the good ones stand out, minor good bits that can be used in better titles, muse for the designers as they get their ideas from -everything-(i know, "coffee maker" title is in the works), but maybe most prominently; people learn from mistakes. "That was a bad idea, let's not go there.", or in the excellent scenarios "That was almsot a good idea, let's do it better."
So, what now?
Well the crappy games are not going anywhere. You as a gamer should just relax, let crap games be crap, exercise your right to not buy them, remember that someone else might like it and enjoy the quality games that are around. Check out free games, try to educate people on the good titles and not the bad, leave your rage at home and tell more often when you found a good gem in the dungheep.
The amount of good games hasn't gone anywhere peeps, it's just hidden behind a pile of rage, flung dung and silence. Let's change that shall we.
Think that's it.
Common viewpoint, i'd like to think.
I'm not going to go into the whole milking cow thing, or the publishing dates, or other such boring things that we all know contribute to fast produced games with only money in mind. There's plenty of that discussion anytime there's a new NFL/NHL/FIFA/HALO/etc around.
The main thing here is illusion, or delusion on another hand. The amount of good games hasn't really declined, but there are two reasons why it seems that way.
1: The sheer amount of games.
When you're looking for a diamond in a dungheep, it's easy when the dungheep is in your backyard, barely reaching to your ankles. This was the case in the olden golden days. Good games were easy to pick out, as it was most likely a case of 1 in 10. In less fortunate parts of the world, with crappy game stores, if someone was lucky enough to even have a crappy one at all, the nmber would be closer to 1 in 5.
Some even had a healthy "i'll play what i get" situation, where you play the things you happen to have around.
These days, i dare say, the game industry is larger then the movie industry, if looked at from a company amount and the amount of titles launched per year. So, the dungheep is up to our necks, past the forehead and we could live inside it. Finding those gems is a harer job by the day.
Not to mention, there's soon more gamestops and game dispenseries then starbucks.
This ofcourse would be a lovely situation back in the day, a plethora of games to choose from, you could play 24/7/365 and still not manage to go through every game. If it weren't for the second part.
2: Teh Internets.
Back in the day, when gaming was for nerds and not that popular, you'd be lucky if you had a little flop of a magazine in your mailbox(that's...an actual box for mails, not that icon on your screen) to tell you what games rock'em and what games suck more then the mandatory paris hilton sex joke. These magazines in turn had to pick&choose between this game and that, have some good reviews so the magazine isn't all about fails and all in all, they probably reviewed 2-3 bad games. That was your media. Not a really covering expose on the crapNES of games now is it?
Friends ofcourse shared their experiences, but rarely you didn't say that you bought this and that crappy game, but instead told people to try this, or most likely lend them a copy to play 'cause it was just that awesome. The same picky&choosy mentality of the magazines continued there.
So what changed, excluding the previously mentioned rise of game amount? For one, gaming became popular. The more popular it is, the ore media there is. That didn't eliminate the pocky&choosy mentality though, especially with big name magazines more then not taking a bit of a payday to feature big games.
Main change was, and if you read the part after 2 this is not a surprise, Teh Internets. Suddenly everyone had a voice and the voice of teh internets is nothing if not brutal. You will hear endless of rages about bad game this, bad game that, this sucks, that sucks and a rather e-famous person even makes a..well...living from telling what sucks in games(check zero punctuation if you already haven't). Rate the game sites are everywhere, reviews are put out by the thousands and maybe the biggest intenet contribution to the seeming amount of crappy games is this; information.
It's because you know the amount of games out there, that you can call on the size of the dungheep over your gem.
I'm going to leave out the larger rant about why crap games are good for the industry and say it short; they make the good ones stand out, minor good bits that can be used in better titles, muse for the designers as they get their ideas from -everything-(i know, "coffee maker" title is in the works), but maybe most prominently; people learn from mistakes. "That was a bad idea, let's not go there.", or in the excellent scenarios "That was almsot a good idea, let's do it better."
So, what now?
Well the crappy games are not going anywhere. You as a gamer should just relax, let crap games be crap, exercise your right to not buy them, remember that someone else might like it and enjoy the quality games that are around. Check out free games, try to educate people on the good titles and not the bad, leave your rage at home and tell more often when you found a good gem in the dungheep.
The amount of good games hasn't gone anywhere peeps, it's just hidden behind a pile of rage, flung dung and silence. Let's change that shall we.
Think that's it.