(see The Witness)
The gaming industry is plagued by mind-numbingly-violent games. This is both a curse and a blessing. So what do we do about it? Well some developers have gone in a total opposite direction to the gaming cliche. These are companies and people with a vision of a zen-like few hours of relaxation and heavy thinking.
The problem is that these games do not work. The formula for video games has always been
It is precedent that these games rely on mostly, if not entirely, on story to gain a players attention. Again, not a bad thing, and most games today should take a story to the face. But, by over relying on story you sacrifice gameplay. Ah... gameplay the thing that sets video games apart from other forms of entertainment (well that and immersion, but we will get to that later). More often then not a game with this label lets gameplay fall by the wayside. Much of the (sub)genre just does not get that if a game is not fun to play, the story might as well be as interesting as a wet dishcloth.
Immersion, a word that carries weight in the gaming industry. You think that these games would use this as the point to wrap the audiences attention around their fingers. But, the end product is usually emotionless, robotic, and uninteresting. The audience is almost never given an emotional shock that could match that of a beloved character being slain in front of you, or that of being burned alive while your comrades are screaming about the Russian super-terrorists over the radio (The latter a la Modern Warfare 2)
If these problems are fixed then this genre/subgenre/label/freak occurrence could save gaming, kill gaming, defeat big businesses, lay the blade upon the neck of the indie community, or any number of different paths that the gaming industry could walk. I digress, What do you guys think?
The gaming industry is plagued by mind-numbingly-violent games. This is both a curse and a blessing. So what do we do about it? Well some developers have gone in a total opposite direction to the gaming cliche. These are companies and people with a vision of a zen-like few hours of relaxation and heavy thinking.
The problem is that these games do not work. The formula for video games has always been
This formula has been upheld because games made in this way were interesting, even if they grabbed the audiences attention in a way so juvenile. "Intellectual" games do not have this luxury. They cannot play on these things and still have the label that they are pursuing. So the game has to resort to other devices to grab the audiences attention. This is not a bad thing, but it is never done correctly.said:
It is precedent that these games rely on mostly, if not entirely, on story to gain a players attention. Again, not a bad thing, and most games today should take a story to the face. But, by over relying on story you sacrifice gameplay. Ah... gameplay the thing that sets video games apart from other forms of entertainment (well that and immersion, but we will get to that later). More often then not a game with this label lets gameplay fall by the wayside. Much of the (sub)genre just does not get that if a game is not fun to play, the story might as well be as interesting as a wet dishcloth.
Immersion, a word that carries weight in the gaming industry. You think that these games would use this as the point to wrap the audiences attention around their fingers. But, the end product is usually emotionless, robotic, and uninteresting. The audience is almost never given an emotional shock that could match that of a beloved character being slain in front of you, or that of being burned alive while your comrades are screaming about the Russian super-terrorists over the radio (The latter a la Modern Warfare 2)
If these problems are fixed then this genre/subgenre/label/freak occurrence could save gaming, kill gaming, defeat big businesses, lay the blade upon the neck of the indie community, or any number of different paths that the gaming industry could walk. I digress, What do you guys think?
