(WIP) Gaming + Industry

This is a work in progress, subject to heavy edits.

Recently, several groups of friends and acquaintances became very interested in the "Gaming Industry". I encase this term in inverted commas because I am going to first discuss the loose usage of this term.

As far as oxymoron and ironies go, "Game" and "Industry" are amongst the multitude of paradoxes that are together for the sake of giving something a name. Other paradoxes include, "Microsoft Games" and "LucasArts".

The term "Gaming Industry" in the offline world, generally refers to the casino and gambling industry. "Gaming" is commonly used as a substitute for "Gambling".

The University of Las Vegas and other institutes of higher learning typically name courses related to casino management and operation as degrees in Gaming. The affinity with money and earnings is relatively obvious to any observer.

It is this relationship with money that I have a gripe with.

The online contemporary society of today knows "Gaming" as something more closely related to computer and video games. Which is why I'm questioning, if you add the term "Industry" behind it, does this mean it is only exclusive to the ones who profit from it?

If I were to ask you, "Who is in the Gaming Industry?" I would expect a list of video game companies, publishing houses, designers, developers, game shop uncles, game bloggers and media reviewers. Say I excluded all the abovementioned individuals from my survey, how often would you hear someone retort with an answer "I am"?

Almost never.

Why?

Simply because the additive term, "Industry" makes it seem as though if you were to be included in this category, you would have to somehow be profiting from it. In my honest opinion, and this is my opinion alone - The classification is absolute bullshit.

What good is the Game Industry without its most important ingredient - Players.

Very often in our online society today, we see endless advertising, immense hype and so much media banter of a new game before its release. How often does the actual game do such marketing justice? It is rare to see a game which has been much talked about and discussed yet have longevity.What I mean by this is that, in some remote part of the world, 10 years from its epic launch, will there be a thriving community still playing, modding, supporting and praying for a worthy sequel of a particular game?

I truly believe that the problem with this sell-more approach is because it reduces the gamers to mere cash cows. I find that most degrading. We (gamers) are giving you money in good faith, that you would make a game that touches more than the shallow pretty graphics or something worthy of its successor, and what do you do? Capitalise.

Just go to metacritic and tell me, how many games below the score of 80 have you played for more than a week? Toss that number against the total number of games metacritic has aggregated and bang - you've just been milked.

Time for some case studies!

Case Study #1 - Command and Conquer
I have the original release, the Gold Win95 Edition and the Collectors edition with Covert Ops. Why? Because this game was revolutionary, it changed my thinking, it changed my perception of how you control groups of units and move them around an area. The computer spoke back to you, as if you were really controlling the EVA, units you built responded to you when you clicked them, you were the commander.

Of course I finished the game, I finished it to see all the alternate endings... and the bonus footage. C&C2: Tiberium Sun, that was to be the most anticipated game of my life and I'm pretty sure many others were like me. But what happened? The game got stuck in development hell and became something else. So many people I know bought original Tiberium Sun (or as some of them call it, Tiberium Shit) have complained that it was the biggest waste of their money ever.

Wait! There's more! The GDI and Nod saga couldn't end there! Sure, Tiberium Sun could have been an FPS, but nevermind now! Because there really IS a C&C FPS, called Renegade! Holy mother! There's more! Generals! Or as I like to generally call it Lets-add-more-factions-and-races-and-make-it-modern-day-war!

Honestly, I don't have any incentive at all to reinstall any these spinoff games. Yet, I find myself downloading DOSBox to play vanilla C&C in all its DOS glory. Pixel for pixel.

Case Study #2 - Fallout
It's funny how limitations like graphics processing, 3D rendering, sound and video became the trademarks of classic games. This is especially visible in the Fallout franchise. What was once an isometric platformer, is now a over-the-shoulder real-time-turn-based RPGFPS (lol what).

Fallout 1 and 2 were awesome for its time, it had an interesting parellel universe proposal that is still immensely engaging in terms of storyline. The possiblility of what-ifs in Fallout 1 and 2 were always the core of the game play. What if I said this, what if I didn't pickpocket that NPC, stuff like that.

But as the Franchise evolved it in turn released it's own bastard Tiberium Sun in the form of Fallout: Tactics. Now don't get me wrong, I liked that game for what it was, it was a great idea to have squad controlled combat. But what sucked was that they had to link it to the post nuclear storyline that many love so much. The story that Fallout: Tactics put forward didn't even match that of the preceding Fallouts. I mean, Fallout 2 netted a metascore of 86 for a 1997 game and based on general commentary, most gamers found it was awesome because it expanded on the story and gameplay of the first one (isn't that what a sequel should do?)

So anyway, enter Fallout 3! It netted a score of 91 on metacritic. Yet, the harsh contrast and differing views between the community that has played preceding Fallouts to varying degrees is polarised. Note that I refer to user commentary as the views of gamers, because after all, these are the ones who will be playing the actual game. Most gamers found themselves torn between deciding whether it was "an Oblivion with guns" or "Gears of War done RPG".

Don't get me wrong, I think Fallout 3 i a swell game, in its own right. The concern I have is that these comparisons drawn are both comparing a new game, with other new games. Which brings me to my focal point of this discussion, "The Industry."

Some people may call me a stuck-up purist, but as an observer, I believe it is in my own interest that I pick what I like to play and not what is, quite simply, shoved in my face through marketing and hype.

What I notice most about the Game Industry is its tendency to capitalise on something which already has a fanbase to launch something into the general populace. This business model appears to rely on existing communities of avid fans (lets take TFC for example) to start an online commentary and hype generation as a springboard for new players to dive in and get interested. Remember when TF2 first came out? The oldbies came out of their holes and were actually posting shit on the forums again, some of the SDi guys I've met while clubbing actually were like, "Eh, you guys back in the scene? I wanna go back leh, revive the old fire."

With revivals, comes improvements, the industry pushing out the "same game, but totally different" and we as the followers get sucked into it. Eventually, we're sold to a totally different game. Some have realised this and have said, "Hang on, this actually sucks." But it doesn't matter! The industry has already used you! You already bought the game and you're stuck to it because your comrades are on it! Furthermore, whether you quit or not, is of no consequence to the existing player base.

Perhaps it is because those of my age group are the Doom generation and have grown up to a video game world where we always recite the common phrase, "they don't make them like they used to." So what is it? Has the Industry over taken the Gaming? Are we truly cash cows so willingly milked for a few dollars in exchange for a month of instant gratification?

Truman put forward his stance to me, which I find is a fair judgement: the Doom generation can be seen as somewhat "hardcore gamers" simply because they attach themselves to a franchise or a certain game with such conviction. The younger online youth of today can be seen as "true gamers" because they exercise diversity in purchasing games and consoles across all platforms (many would buy a console just to play a game e.g. MGS4) so although this demographic group may be less attached to one game as compared to the senior bunch, they are also the ideal group to target a new game at.

This reminds me of the Interplay slogan "by gamers for gamers." Sadly, that kind of business model is too niche to make returns of the huge amounts of money spent in developing a game. It's not surprising that so many video game companies have adopted a business model so akin to advertising and marketing - creating a need from a want.

The need to be entertained is stemmed from the human emotion to be socially involved, leading to the advent of social networking in games. People want to stay connected to their friends, track stats, compare achievements and it has almost become a need for them to do so. This is the essence of the Industry turning the fun into a grind, and ultimately, the only way to have "fun" is to spend more play hours on their game. Sometimes, this makes monsters out of people, they attempt to rush through things in the attempt to attain the intangible - eventually leading to a burnout.

My stand on this is simple. Make informed choices when thinking of committing to a new game, why play it if you rush through the story with that downloaded walkthrough you got from some torrent? Why bother playing if you want to use a character editor or some hack? Some people I ask about the WC3 story just tell me, "Oh I play all 4 races lor... then just kill some invaders and got this undead king Kel something, I think can kill him in WoW right?" which is fucking shallow. And to those of you, my fellow clanners, if you think you're not in the Gaming Industry, think again.