Lets just sit back and have a ponder about gaming. No, I don’t mean gaming as a whole, I mean the games coming out or that have come out recently, and the trends they are following. I am not referring to indie, or Android games here. Just the big boys–the Xbox, the Playstation. You get where I am going with this.
Now in your head, think of five games of the same genre on the same platform. If you are an avid gamer, this shouldn’t take long.
I can wager that least three of those five are similar to one another. So, why is this, I ponder?
Namely, in my opinion, the titles coming out bear striking resemblance to one another. if I were to make a brief explanation as to why I think this, it would look something like the following:
- A developer gets a big fat metaphorical light bulb over his head.
- The game is developed with those ideas.
- The game comes out, and the other companies and corporations rip off that idea, believing they can utilize it to get more sales. Or the idea is an old one that’s just used over and over and over again with a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset.
- You end up, over a period of years, with games that have similar mechanics with (maybe) different stories, characters and levels.
- You finally have this wide range of games which are basically “the same.”
Here is an example.
A few days ago I played through HomeFront in one sitting. Good game, I would recommend it to anyone. Alas, that is not my problem with it. My problem, is in essence, as to why this game pretty much mirrors Call of Duty game controls. Or why the game engine feels like THQ’s other title: Frontlines: Fuel of War. Another good game. My problem is that it seems in the first person shooter genre, I am playing “good games” which fail to be great games, because they are too busy ripping off other games or repeating the same old process, engines, and styles over, and over, and over, and over, and over in monogamy.
Call of Duty did this too. Pretty much every game they’ve made in their genre, be it from Treyarch, or Infinity Ward, has been the same. Different weapons, different story, different characters. Same. Game.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
I swear on all that is holy, if Call of Duty: Ghosts is going to be similar, as I pretty much think it will be, I am going to buy the game, play the game, then break the game, and send it back to them in two. Because it will be broke, and they can fix it. The idea of that very mindset is broken in itself!
These companies do not make new games. They are making old games, with new content. Essentially every game they have made has been the same. Lets pick on the two series a little more shall we?
Call of Duty:
- Modern Warfare.
- World at War.
- Modern Warfare 2.
- Black Ops.
- Modern Warfare 3.
- Black Ops 2.
Same game. Same mechanics. Same play styles.
Nothing. New.
Don’t believe for one minute that I am a dissatisfied consumer. I love these titles. I simply don’t like the way they are tweaking them each time, ever so slightly. It feels like there is a cheek there–as if these companies don’t want to strive to get better. As if they want to take old recipes and put a new seasoning on them. Sure they have a slightly different flavor. But it’s the same bloody meal! Call of Duty has been the same since its release in 2007.
That’s from modern warfare onwards, I am not counting the previous games of CoD.
I’ve been eating CoD since 2007. It’s 2013 now. I am basically telling myself, I have been biting into the same CoD for gaming for what…
Six years?
Nobody wants to eat the same fish for over half a decade! Give me some beef or pork or something! Don’t just put on a new seasoning each time! Each new game you make feels like an expansion.
Does this make sense? This is a prime example as to how game developers are:
- Getting too comfortable.
- Perfectly content to use the same ideas over and over again.
- Perfectly content to steal one another off of the same ideas, despite the option to try something different being there.
- Fine and dandy to sit on their titles instead of getting out there, getting new stuff, and making gaming not an enjoyable experience. But a bloody great one.
There, my readers, is a prime example as to how gaming has gone corporate. Some are no longer seeking out new ways to make the gamer happy, but recycling the same old material to put together a game and generate sales.
And on that very notion alone, just that simple principle that profit is better than client experience, makes me as a gamer so disappointed that I play these titles. So let down that my needs are being neglected for something new.
This wolf, for once…
Has been bitten.
