E3 has just finished up for the year, and to be honest, I could have cared less that it was going on. Even as friends and expo-goers gush about the new games and technologies, I find myself yawning or rolling my eyes. I suppose the ill feelings stem from my not really caring about video games now like I did when I was a seventeen year old, let alone a seven year old. That, and just the fact that the video game industry as a whole has changed and grown so vastly (in the wrong direction, in my honest opinion) -- and let's face it, the last two E3 expos were not very good.
...I somehow think their approach to protesting E3's "Booth Babes" is a tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny bit flawed.A lot of it has to do with the fact that North America has taken back its "rightful" seat in the monopoly of game-making -- something we haven't seen since the '70s and early '80s. As we all know, Japan's basically held our eggs for us since Nintendo changed the world in '85, and unceremoniously shunted North American and European companies into the minority and PC gaming.
And though this may seem like a really big "OH YEAH!" for primarily the Western developers, I sort of noticed something striking; a parallel if you will, between the industry now, and the industry back then.
To put it short: A lack of creativity and/or originality. How many clones were there of several other games back in the day? A lot. If Atari had a Breakout, Intellivision had a similar type of game, and vica-versa. Basically, most Western developers seem to be in it for the money.
Please don't think this is a post saying "Japanese games are better than Western games", because it's not. There are a lot of really good Western games -- in fact, the Sony Playstation is one of my favourite mediums for Western gaming. I just think that the Japanese (whether they're in it for the money or not), coming from a nation so devoted to the arts, know a thing or two about how to come up with creative concepts a little better than we do.
Yeah, you can say that most everything is a copy of something else, and while that is true, that's where the former part of my point comes in. There's nothing wrong with stemming off of someone else's idea, just be creative about it. I mean, Nintendo is even "guilty" of that. Mario Bros. is a completely blatant clone of Joust -- but instead of being a knight flying around on a giant ostritch, you're a plumber trying to rid Brooklyn's sewers of turtles and crabs!
Heck, I may be totally way off with my opinion on modern gaming. I'm really an outsider looking in, and I only recently bought a 360, so I may be wrong on this, but from a first impression viewpoint, all the Western developers are giving us are primarily the following:
-Free-roaming sandbox
-First person shooter
-Music
Not only that but in most of these games you get:
-Brown, muddy graphics and colour pallettes
-Faceless or voiceless heroes (okay this can be easily argued, since Samus Aran of Metroid fame wears a helmet, and Mario and Link very rarely utter a line of text)
-More attention spent on graphics and gameplay than spent on story and controls
But in all seriousness, how many versions of Guitar Hero are there now? It feels like a hundred. And to think, back in the '90s, people complained about Street Fighter 2's multiple updates. I mean, at least Dance Dance Revolution provided a form of exercise -- if I wanted to play an instrument, I'd learn how to play an instrument.
In the same vein, look at all the World War II titles, most (if not all) being first-person shooters, and developed by Western companies. And there's a TON of them. I'm not one to cudgel the Free Speech act, and I don't want to come across as politically correct -- but I really don't think having so many games related to one of the most traumatizing and totally senseless pages of history is particularly, um, tactful? Is that the word I'm looking for? Wolfenstien 3D was pretty over-the-top, especially for the time it was released -- and to be honest, I really think it should have ended there.
I realize it's a pretty pointed thing to say, and A LOT of people disagree with me, but making a video game based around something like World War II is almost as irreverent as someone thinking it would be a good idea to make video games based around the Old and New Testame--oh wait. They did do that.
Has Western gaming really changed much over the years? I can't really tell,with all the first-persony, insensitivity-to-history-and-culture stuff.
It's also the fact that developers keep trying to make video games more and more realistic. Last time I checked, the reason I played video games was to escape reality. I was watching a friend play Grand Theft Auto 4, and all he was doing in-game was making calls to people on his cell-phone, and driving his drunk friend around to gay bars.
I'm sorry, but is that supposed to be fun? If I wanted to call people, and drive around getting drunk while being hit on by buff men in speedos and bow-ties, I'd go outside; I don't need a video game to do that. And I know that's not all you do in the game, but even when I tried it out on my own, I found myself bored to death within ten minutes.
I remember when I was a kid, most of the video games I played were fantastical, and had completely unrealistic ideas and gameplay mechanics. Man, back in the day, it was freaking manditory for your main character to be a giant polar bear wearing a chef hat, who drove around on a flying broomstick, chucking exploding date squares at his enemies, all so he could save his girlfriend from the evil, fifty-foot purple dragon named Kraw. But then again, most of the games back then were developed and published in Japan, a country, as I mentioned, pretty devoted to the arts.
The fact is, North America -- The United States specifically, couldn't care less about "artsy-fartsy" things. And unfortunately, Canada seems to be following the same path. Do you know how hard it is to get Canadians to pay attention to almost anything produced and sold directly in their own country? Canadian films 80 to 90% of the time go to the wayside, overshadowed by U.S. releases.
The literary industry is even worse. Nobody in the Canadian industry wants anything creative. They want heart-felt (aka long and boring) stories that mostly centre around Canadian history or growing up in Canada. It is positively RARE that a Canadian literary agency or publishing house will accept anything that is creative fiction. I only know of three Canadian genre writers, and I always get the same response when brought up in conversation: "Who?"
If you want the perfect definition of the Canadian literary industry, and how it works, go on Youtube and look up any one interview of Margaret Atwood, Canada's best known current writer, and seriously try to watch the entire thing without either falling asleep or finding something else more stimulating.
But back on topic, I suppose that's partly why I just stopped caring about the gaming industry, and the whole gaming expo ordeal. There are a lot of things I despise about the industry as it is (and you'll probably hear about it), but for me, there's really nothing to look forward to -- and even when there is a rare title that actually is pretty creative and new (Bioshock, Fallout 3 -- and Brutal Legend, coming soon), I literally have to get into the mentality to drag myself over to the console for a try-out.
Microsoft's new mascot; Lothar the Warrior Death-Kitten
I'm sorry, but is that supposed to be fun? If I wanted to call people, and drive around getting drunk while being hit on by buff men in speedos and bow-ties, I'd go outside; I don't need a video game to do that. And I know that's not all you do in the game, but even when I tried it out on my own, I found myself bored to death within ten minutes.
I remember when I was a kid, most of the video games I played were fantastical, and had completely unrealistic ideas and gameplay mechanics. Man, back in the day, it was freaking manditory for your main character to be a giant polar bear wearing a chef hat, who drove around on a flying broomstick, chucking exploding date squares at his enemies, all so he could save his girlfriend from the evil, fifty-foot purple dragon named Kraw. But then again, most of the games back then were developed and published in Japan, a country, as I mentioned, pretty devoted to the arts.
The fact is, North America -- The United States specifically, couldn't care less about "artsy-fartsy" things. And unfortunately, Canada seems to be following the same path. Do you know how hard it is to get Canadians to pay attention to almost anything produced and sold directly in their own country? Canadian films 80 to 90% of the time go to the wayside, overshadowed by U.S. releases.
The only known Canadian movie that I know
actually made it big inside AND outside of the country.
actually made it big inside AND outside of the country.
The literary industry is even worse. Nobody in the Canadian industry wants anything creative. They want heart-felt (aka long and boring) stories that mostly centre around Canadian history or growing up in Canada. It is positively RARE that a Canadian literary agency or publishing house will accept anything that is creative fiction. I only know of three Canadian genre writers, and I always get the same response when brought up in conversation: "Who?"
If you want the perfect definition of the Canadian literary industry, and how it works, go on Youtube and look up any one interview of Margaret Atwood, Canada's best known current writer, and seriously try to watch the entire thing without either falling asleep or finding something else more stimulating.
But back on topic, I suppose that's partly why I just stopped caring about the gaming industry, and the whole gaming expo ordeal. There are a lot of things I despise about the industry as it is (and you'll probably hear about it), but for me, there's really nothing to look forward to -- and even when there is a rare title that actually is pretty creative and new (Bioshock, Fallout 3 -- and Brutal Legend, coming soon), I literally have to get into the mentality to drag myself over to the console for a try-out.
Microsoft's new mascot; Lothar the Warrior Death-KittenIt would explain why I hold retro games so close to my heart. You could make the argument that there was an over saturation of platforming games, much like there's an over saturation of FPS and music-related titles now, but ... I don't know. They just give me this feeling of fulfillment and excitement -- a feeling I haven't once yet felt about modern gaming.
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