If you think about it video games really are incredibly young compared to books, movies, theater, and the like. All of those have had at least a century to develop. At the very least. Video games though are barely around 30 years old. Just old enough so that the very first group of people to grow up with them are now adults. Still gamers insist that we are mature when anyone with half a brain could plainly tell you we aren't. Not just in terms of community but in products we produce or rather products we produce that fly off the shelves as if they were a precious metal that will soon be gone forever. I suppose its a right of passage for any new medium. Making the stuff that is initially fun and cool and just a bit simple because hey its an experimental new medium. I mean look at Action Comics No. 1. That is a pretty damn simple straight forward story compared to the modern adventures of Superman. Comics though have been around for a while and if we are talking popular superhero comics they've been around for 75 years since this year is Superman's 75th anniversary.
After the medium finds its legs though it begins to make grander creations though said creations might not always be the most thought provoking, intellectual, or anything of that sort. Its pretty superficial stuff with maybe one or two things popping up that show any genuine insight. That is where we are at now as a medium. Creating grandios bombastic spectacles that perhaps don't offer a lot of insight. Not to say that stuff doesn't exist. Its just that the thought provoking stuff is buried underneath a mountain of superficial spectacle. Still with the power of technology these days we cannot afford to take a century to become respected and mature. Obviously the media has a lot to do with that part as a majority of news staff don't really care for games and probably haven't played a game since Pong. We will constantly come under fire from them.
We are going to be forced to grow up faster then our cousins for that simple fact. People can jump on us at any time. The current school of game designers (such as myself) are gonna essentially help gaming through its awkward teen years. Not to say we should do away with games like CoD and Mario completely but things won't get better until games like Spec. Ops. or Bioshock not only sell a lot but quite a few more are being made. Movies have found their grove. They have a balance of fun and entertaining pop corn flicks and then serious and introspective thinking pieces and luckily those two overlap every now and again (see Inception). Video games on the other hand are so unbalanced on that scale its not even funny. So for the discussion then do you think we are entering our "teen" years or still a ways off from that. Also what methods would help the situation?
For me I think having an official game awards show that is not the Spike VGA's. A show put on by larger 3rd party companies at first that elects panels of actual video game developers to vote on categories with little to no audience input. A dick move? Maybe but if the audience is allowed to vote then very few games will ever take the place of CoD, Battlefield, or Halo as game of the year stuff. I think that if they had categories like best character design or best level and the one responsible for the conception of said products was the nominee it would be awesome. Games could start being greenlit on names alone which could be really healthy for our medium.
Imagine someone in the games industry being like Clint Eastwood. A guy who could get a movie greenlit on his name alone. That could be awesome.
After the medium finds its legs though it begins to make grander creations though said creations might not always be the most thought provoking, intellectual, or anything of that sort. Its pretty superficial stuff with maybe one or two things popping up that show any genuine insight. That is where we are at now as a medium. Creating grandios bombastic spectacles that perhaps don't offer a lot of insight. Not to say that stuff doesn't exist. Its just that the thought provoking stuff is buried underneath a mountain of superficial spectacle. Still with the power of technology these days we cannot afford to take a century to become respected and mature. Obviously the media has a lot to do with that part as a majority of news staff don't really care for games and probably haven't played a game since Pong. We will constantly come under fire from them.
We are going to be forced to grow up faster then our cousins for that simple fact. People can jump on us at any time. The current school of game designers (such as myself) are gonna essentially help gaming through its awkward teen years. Not to say we should do away with games like CoD and Mario completely but things won't get better until games like Spec. Ops. or Bioshock not only sell a lot but quite a few more are being made. Movies have found their grove. They have a balance of fun and entertaining pop corn flicks and then serious and introspective thinking pieces and luckily those two overlap every now and again (see Inception). Video games on the other hand are so unbalanced on that scale its not even funny. So for the discussion then do you think we are entering our "teen" years or still a ways off from that. Also what methods would help the situation?
For me I think having an official game awards show that is not the Spike VGA's. A show put on by larger 3rd party companies at first that elects panels of actual video game developers to vote on categories with little to no audience input. A dick move? Maybe but if the audience is allowed to vote then very few games will ever take the place of CoD, Battlefield, or Halo as game of the year stuff. I think that if they had categories like best character design or best level and the one responsible for the conception of said products was the nominee it would be awesome. Games could start being greenlit on names alone which could be really healthy for our medium.
Imagine someone in the games industry being like Clint Eastwood. A guy who could get a movie greenlit on his name alone. That could be awesome.