Complaining About Human Nature?
June 2nd, 2009Michael Abbott of Brainy Gamer is disappointed with E3 because he views it as a “retrenchment” of “male power fantasies” where a lone male hero is sent out to wreak retribution and/or vengeance. The message he concludes this sends to gamers:
‘We’re bringing you bigger, edgier, and more visually arresting versions of the games we brought you last year, and the year before that. Sure, we’ve got casual games too, and a new slate of appalling games for girls; but we know you know where the action is.’
Abbott is always thoughtful, and I appreciate his sincere pursuit of storytelling exploration in gaming, but I worry he’s blaming the effect here rather than the cause. Yes, it’s true that many of these games are sequels. But the publishers aren’t dictating that people buy them because of some desire to impose their demands on gamers - they’re making these games because the first ones sold well. In effect, gamers told them to do this. The fact that the topics aren’t particularly imaginative is perhaps relevant but a certainly reflection of mass taste rather than publisher obduracy.
This isn’t particularly surprising - elite tastes have rarely comported with those of the masses in any medium. But I would caution thoughtful gamers and commentators not to take this as a personal insult, but rather a reflection of reality. The terrible economic climate is necessarily making companies more risk-averse, certainly, but it’s not changing their priorities. Rather, it’s cutting off the long tails of their production schedules, in which the riskiest and most experimental games tend to reside.
Finally, let’s be careful about blaming the victim. It’s definitely reasonable to lament the lack of a given attribute in gaming today. Yet we should be cautious not to minimize the progress made so far, nor to cast stones at our fellow gamers because we simply don’t agree with them.
Posted in Commentary, Geoff |
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I think I understand how you read my piece as blaming the effect rather than the cause. I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been about my real concern. My target is the industry, not gamers, and what seems to me a colossal lack of imagination.
I listed 30 games in the post, but I could have listed 50. They’re all basically the same game. Yes, maybe one is 1st-person, another is 3rd-person; one is a beat-em-up, one is a shooter. But it just feels like saturation to me and an epidemic of unimaginative design. That’s the real point I’m trying to make, and that’s where my disappointment comes from. Maybe I derailed my argument when I got off on the “male power fantasy” tangent…but I admit that sort of bugs me too.
I’m honestly not a shooter hater, despite concerns I’ve expressed about them. I’m genuinely excited about some of the games on that list. I’m simply growing bored with the genre, and I see another tidal wave of sameness headed my way. That’s what provoked my post.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Michael Abbott is one of my favorite bloggers. It’s because he’s passionate, well-”spoken” and tends to give thought to things others rarely scrutinize. It’s this very passion and and commitment he gives to his ideas that generally leads me to at times agree with every word, and in some cases to categorically disagree with his assertions.
This is one of the times that I feel like he has ripped the thoughts from my soul. I’ve been feeling this way for a long time. Although, I’ve generally placed the “blame” more squarely on the shoulders of the general game consumer than the developers or the publishers. I don’t know that they are unimaginative so much as they are forced to produce a certain product by the failures of games like Mirrors Edge, Zak and Wiki, etc.
Michael uses the MS conference as the strongest example of retrenchment. I think he’s right. What then does it say about gamers, when every blog I read is extolling the virtues of the “amazing MS press conference”? They’re literally salivating over “what could be the greatest year in gaming this generation” on sites like Kotaku and Joystiq.
That being said, Aliens vs. Predator looks sweet!