Irony said:
Hipsters gonna hip.
Anyway, I agree with him here, if people like a game that's great, whether it's popular or not. Developers don't have to make innovative games, hell they don't even have to make 'good' games, they just have to make games that people enjoy (of course innovative and good games are usually more enjoyable then repeatative bad games, but sometimes you want a mindless brawler to waste a couple hours on).
I don't think anyone who likes games hates a mindless bralwer/shooter
sometimes, but it's more than 'sometimes' that these games actually come about. At least, we're trained to feel this way by the trends.
And even this wouldn't be an issue if video games were arguably proven to have so much creative potential. Games could have been just 'fun' but nooo, someone had to go snoopin' in the innovation jar... Assholes.
Jumplion said:
Now, obviously those pictures and the article are really cynical and jaded, but I really just can't help and feel that way as well. They may very well all be great games, more power to them if they are, but that doesn't really help the fact that we are just heavy in FPS saturation. And nearly all of them are the same; they have a tacked-on single player to go with the same-old CoD style multiplayer, the story tends to be shit, it's nothing but explosions and more explosions, everyone forgets about it after a few months, and the cycle repeats.
I'd just like to say that not 'everyone' forgets about the various CoD clones and FPS saturators; its mostly the people who perpetuate the trend that causes this saturation in the first place who forget all the other clones.
People who enjoy, say, CoD, for one, but also don't play anything else EXCEPT the next iteration, or feel compelled to compare other FPS games to CoD. These folks not as bad as the Wii shovelware crowd, but I can't say these folks contribute much to the expansion of this medium (and call it a feeling, but I DO think we need expansion.)
Jumplion said:
You need to plant the seed before something grows. Innovation isn't going to grow if innovation isn't being sold.
I second this. Fun games are fun, and awesome, but call me ADHD (or old), but that doesn't catch my attention much. More accurately, 'fun' does not make me a
fan of video games. Innovation, something that surprises me, the feeling of discovery is much more likely to make me a fan, to want to see more from those developers than a game I can merely find 'fun' (especially if there's 10 other games so similar in play style that I can play).
As far as the OT goes, yea, popular games are not BAD games. Most of the time, they're good, well-made games. But 'popular games(innovative or not)' have much better financial result than 'good or bad (innovative or not)' games. This leads to the problem; when comepeting developers
have to compete with the king of the hill (and obviously don't have as much money as said king), trade-offs between popularity and innovation begin.
I think what would help is if CoD, being the 'king' focused on really shaking up the FPS genre by innovation, being they have the capital and name to make it work. The smaller competitors should have innovation as their base, but never forget they have room to make fun/popular aspects, even if they bite a
few chunks from the golden calf.