TL;DR and discussion question is at the bottom.
This is a serious question I've been struggling with myself for quite a while now.
So those of you who are even remotely connected to consoles know that today was the release date for two particular games worthy of note: Saints Row: The Third and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.
You have one second to guess which one I am going to rail against. Time's up. You guessed correctly.
It is a disturbing trend in modern culture that those who control it--that is, the publishers (and by extension, the developers), the film makers, the media outlets, etc.--are afraid. They are afraid and frightened of anything called an innovative thought or a shred of creativity. It has literally shot my day down to depressing dumps (try saying that five times fast) to realize that Western creativity is almost dead, and while I could go on a long rant about how the increasing democratization of society and the illiberal nature of Western politics is the cause for it, I'm just going to tie this down to video games because lord knows I don't have the attention span to bother writing about it.
I hate remakes. I hate remakes with a passion. A fiery passion made of fire, generated by the heat of a million George Foreman grills shot violently into the Sun. And I hate Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary because it is a remake. And I hate you for buying it.
The only reason I'm specifically naming Halo: CEA specifically is because it's the most recent offender. Other offenders include Super Mario Galaxy 2, GoldenEye Reloaded, Tomb Raider Anniversary, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, and Conker: Live and Reloaded, among many others. Remakes represent the absolute worse thing that can happen to a culture. A culture can become depraved, a culture can die, a culture can represent everything against regularly established morals including the raping of other people with guns and switchblades, but these aren't the worse fates that can happen. The worse thing that can ever happen to a culture is for it to stagnate.
Like Mordin in Mass Effect 2 said. No drive for change, no motivation for development, no evolution. This has been a trend for a while but it's official that with all of the purchases and positive scores of Halo: CEA (which I reiterate is not the sole offender, just the most recent one) I am confident now that we have hit a brick fucking wall. The video games industry has become the worst creative medium now. Video games are nailed inside a creative coffin, and nobody is daring to try to do anything to get out.
It's the same plight that is shared by the movie industry: while less expensive than outright making a movie (usually), video games can still be an expensive venture and an investment of time and effort. Hollywood and publishers are scared shitless about new things because they care about sales. Which, in all honestly, is a reasonable concern given their business (making money).
I'm not saying that the publishing companies and developers are to blame: if anything, we, as gamers, are. Video games are at least five times more expensive than a movie ticket, so we're that much more apprehensive about anything that goes outside of the norms and might look good but play like shit. We're overly cautious in this day and age, and given the economic times we certainly have a right to be.
So for every witty, intelligent gem we get in our media, like Fight Club or Shadow of the Colossus or In Time (which, to go off topic, was sloppily done as a movie but had an intriguing and original idea) or Bastion, we get at least ten shitty knockoffs like Transformers, Jack and Jill, Modern Warfare 3, and remakes like Halo: CEA.
Take a short three minutes to look up how many games in the past five years (up to 2006) have depicted the United States being invaded by a foreign power; a single plot point. A single setting out of a myriad of things that make up a creative work, especially one as versatile as a video game. In fact, let me list them.
Modern Warfare 2.
Crysis 2. (Aliens, but still counts)
Resistance 3. (Aliens again, still counts)
Homefront.
World in Conflict.
Red Alert 3.
Modern Warfare 3.
The thing about the above games is that every single features New York being attacked and the Statue of Liberty smugly standing off in the horizon as if to not-so-subtly remind you of what's at stake. This is our culture stagnating in a nutshell. All of these games have been successful, and I'm not even going into the dreaded territory that is "Every Single Gun Sight Looks The Exact Fucking Same".
Again, we as gamers are to blame. Most of us don't even perceive how narrow our ranges have gotten. A lot of us just care about not wasting our money and getting things we like, even if they're the exact same thing from ten goddamn years ago (See Halo: CEA). That's fair. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy things you like or that you should waste your money just because something might look creative.
But there can be no denying that as gamers, we are now stuck in the creative equivalent of a Skinner box. Push lever, get pellet. Buy game, we'll get more pellets. Don't buy game, and we have to deal with spending time not playing games, or playing older games, which we seem to consider a punishment. We don't like punishment, so we push lever to get pellet. Day after week after month after year.
My point is, that I'm asking you to consider the circumstances. We've hit the ceiling of graphics, because lord knows 3D won't fucking work for another few decades and all it does is give people like me migraines. There is no ceiling for us to work to. We literally do not have any sort of creative future to look forward to.
It used to be so simple. Go back ten years and we had something to work towards. We knew we could make better graphics, and we did. But then we reached the graphical ceiling, and developers kind of looked at each other and went "Well, shit. Now what?"
TL;DR: Our culture is stagnating, as exemplified in our media i.e. movies and video games being samey and tired releases. Do you feel that creative ideas are, subtle or not, not welcome in our society given our hesitation and our acclimation to "usual" things (for example, first person shooters)? Where do you see our creative future? Do you see it breaking into something beyond mere graphics? How do you see it happening, if at all?
This is a serious question I've been struggling with myself for quite a while now.
So those of you who are even remotely connected to consoles know that today was the release date for two particular games worthy of note: Saints Row: The Third and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.
You have one second to guess which one I am going to rail against. Time's up. You guessed correctly.
It is a disturbing trend in modern culture that those who control it--that is, the publishers (and by extension, the developers), the film makers, the media outlets, etc.--are afraid. They are afraid and frightened of anything called an innovative thought or a shred of creativity. It has literally shot my day down to depressing dumps (try saying that five times fast) to realize that Western creativity is almost dead, and while I could go on a long rant about how the increasing democratization of society and the illiberal nature of Western politics is the cause for it, I'm just going to tie this down to video games because lord knows I don't have the attention span to bother writing about it.
I hate remakes. I hate remakes with a passion. A fiery passion made of fire, generated by the heat of a million George Foreman grills shot violently into the Sun. And I hate Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary because it is a remake. And I hate you for buying it.
The only reason I'm specifically naming Halo: CEA specifically is because it's the most recent offender. Other offenders include Super Mario Galaxy 2, GoldenEye Reloaded, Tomb Raider Anniversary, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, and Conker: Live and Reloaded, among many others. Remakes represent the absolute worse thing that can happen to a culture. A culture can become depraved, a culture can die, a culture can represent everything against regularly established morals including the raping of other people with guns and switchblades, but these aren't the worse fates that can happen. The worse thing that can ever happen to a culture is for it to stagnate.
Like Mordin in Mass Effect 2 said. No drive for change, no motivation for development, no evolution. This has been a trend for a while but it's official that with all of the purchases and positive scores of Halo: CEA (which I reiterate is not the sole offender, just the most recent one) I am confident now that we have hit a brick fucking wall. The video games industry has become the worst creative medium now. Video games are nailed inside a creative coffin, and nobody is daring to try to do anything to get out.
It's the same plight that is shared by the movie industry: while less expensive than outright making a movie (usually), video games can still be an expensive venture and an investment of time and effort. Hollywood and publishers are scared shitless about new things because they care about sales. Which, in all honestly, is a reasonable concern given their business (making money).
I'm not saying that the publishing companies and developers are to blame: if anything, we, as gamers, are. Video games are at least five times more expensive than a movie ticket, so we're that much more apprehensive about anything that goes outside of the norms and might look good but play like shit. We're overly cautious in this day and age, and given the economic times we certainly have a right to be.
So for every witty, intelligent gem we get in our media, like Fight Club or Shadow of the Colossus or In Time (which, to go off topic, was sloppily done as a movie but had an intriguing and original idea) or Bastion, we get at least ten shitty knockoffs like Transformers, Jack and Jill, Modern Warfare 3, and remakes like Halo: CEA.
Take a short three minutes to look up how many games in the past five years (up to 2006) have depicted the United States being invaded by a foreign power; a single plot point. A single setting out of a myriad of things that make up a creative work, especially one as versatile as a video game. In fact, let me list them.
Modern Warfare 2.
Crysis 2. (Aliens, but still counts)
Resistance 3. (Aliens again, still counts)
Homefront.
World in Conflict.
Red Alert 3.
Modern Warfare 3.
The thing about the above games is that every single features New York being attacked and the Statue of Liberty smugly standing off in the horizon as if to not-so-subtly remind you of what's at stake. This is our culture stagnating in a nutshell. All of these games have been successful, and I'm not even going into the dreaded territory that is "Every Single Gun Sight Looks The Exact Fucking Same".
Again, we as gamers are to blame. Most of us don't even perceive how narrow our ranges have gotten. A lot of us just care about not wasting our money and getting things we like, even if they're the exact same thing from ten goddamn years ago (See Halo: CEA). That's fair. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy things you like or that you should waste your money just because something might look creative.
But there can be no denying that as gamers, we are now stuck in the creative equivalent of a Skinner box. Push lever, get pellet. Buy game, we'll get more pellets. Don't buy game, and we have to deal with spending time not playing games, or playing older games, which we seem to consider a punishment. We don't like punishment, so we push lever to get pellet. Day after week after month after year.
My point is, that I'm asking you to consider the circumstances. We've hit the ceiling of graphics, because lord knows 3D won't fucking work for another few decades and all it does is give people like me migraines. There is no ceiling for us to work to. We literally do not have any sort of creative future to look forward to.
It used to be so simple. Go back ten years and we had something to work towards. We knew we could make better graphics, and we did. But then we reached the graphical ceiling, and developers kind of looked at each other and went "Well, shit. Now what?"
TL;DR: Our culture is stagnating, as exemplified in our media i.e. movies and video games being samey and tired releases. Do you feel that creative ideas are, subtle or not, not welcome in our society given our hesitation and our acclimation to "usual" things (for example, first person shooters)? Where do you see our creative future? Do you see it breaking into something beyond mere graphics? How do you see it happening, if at all?
