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E3 2012 And The Death Of Mainstream Gaming
40 years of game design and innovation has ended in a brown, bloody, shitty sludge where every game involves a tattooed hard-man crouching behind things and shooting people in the face...
So that’s it for another year of E3. And the assorted games industry execs can bristle with pride at a job well done. For this was the finest demonstration yet of just how feckless and shite mainstream gaming has become. It was a performance they have been collaborating on for the past 15 years, but this time it all came together. It was a barnstorming show.
One-by-one they took to the stage to hammer home a simple but powerful message – mainstream gaming is dead. Go back to your homes – watch television, read a book, play the clarinet, go to the movies. If you must play games, do it on a smartphone or a tablet. We repeat – mainstream gaming is dead. Until next year; thank you and good night.
What made this message so effective was that it wasn’t just marketing talk – they had the proof. Up on the giant screens they bombarded the audience with a dazzling display of the dullest and most sterile games that this flaccid industry could muster. Different execs. Different publishers. Different consoles. Different titles – but all merging to form a glorious kind of gaming sludge.
It’s a brown, bloody, shitty sludge. Submerged within you will find a guy with tattoos and a gun. He will be running around and crouching behind things and switching weapons and shooting people. There will be death, pain, screaming, stabbing, slashing and bloody splatters in the mud. And crouching behind things.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Modern Warfare 3, Halo 4, Battlefield 4, Far Cry 3, Dead Space 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Crysis 3, Resident Evil 6, Lost Planet 3. The names aren’t even important any more. Let’s just stick to numbers – 2-3-4-4-3-3-3-6-3…
Mainstream gaming is dead. Go back to your homes – watch television, read a book, play the clarinet, go to the movies
This is the culmination of 40 years of games design. If this was the movies, we would be entering the Golden Age. But it’s not – this is games. And we’ve transcended creativity and innovation. We’re way past that – we left it behind some time in the mid 90’s.
We don’t need it because we have this shitty bloody sludge to roll around in. To cake ourselves in; to protect ourselves from the idea that games could ever be something more than just running around and slaughtering people.
But what about those oddballs who don’t like games involving endless shooting and killing – which is around 98 percent of the world’s population. Or what about those who don’t mind them – they’re just fucking sick of them? Well, that’s not a problem because they have Nintendo.
You may remember Nintendo – they used to make great games. But they too have gone past that stage – they’re so much more advanced. Now they make gimmicky new consoles on which to play those old games.
At E3 we saw the latest version, something called the Wii U. This is similar to the Nintendo Wii; that thing you have stored in a box in the attic – but this one comes with an all-singing, all-dancing tea tray controller. Suddenly a whole new world opens up. You can play Super Mario with a giant controller and tilt it and things. It’s a gaming revolution.
And the great thing about the Wii U is that Nintendo now has a console with the power to join Sony and Microsoft in their bukakke party. Already you can see them licking their lips, developing a taste for this bloody, shitty gaming sludge.
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COMMENTS
I don't believe this for a second, it seems rather reactionary and hella over zealous. Yeah admittedly the industry is hungry for some innovation but when you have franchises as big as COD (which i don't play) and MOH you're gonna get the clones and the reissues until we get new engrossing content to take its place. But to suggest the industry is just forcing out stool after stool is just wrong. The last 2 years we have seen some AMAZING innovation and content that has pushed the boundaries for what these machines can do and what they do. LA Noire was exceptional and a true departure from the norm, Limbo is quite simply one of the most beautiful digital ips ever created, Journey for the playstation and Skyrim are always ips of amazing quality and worth every penny of their rrp. Also Dishonoured, WatchDogs and Far Cry 3 in my opinion are looking amazing ... just because someone makes a FPS it doesn't mean we automatically have to pan it for its lack of innovation ... maybe we should give them a chance and judge them on quality of content. I have the ever increasing and likely hood of war bound FPS BUT i love the industry and always find these articles as nothing more than bashing for bashings sake ... the industry is alive and well .... we have countless number of amazing companies producing amazing games - the release schedule over the last 2 years has been , as mentioned, the strongest yet .... VIVA LA PIXELS!!
Fair points, David. I wouldn't agree we have seen amazing innovation though - not in mainstream gaming. LA Noire was a point and click adventure. Don't see how Skyrim does anything particularly new. And the industry isn't thriving at the moment. Less and less people are buying boxed games. Tens of thousands of jobs are being lost as companies close.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the gaming industry is defined by its customers. Developers make money by targeting the market that's out there, and that market is overwhelmingly populated by testosterone-charged males eager to stab, shoot or blow up whatever crosses their path. If you own Battlefield 1-3, Halo 1-3, Resident Evil 1-5 and all the CODs then it seems a bit silly to call out developers for continuing to milk you for cash. If you don't give developers a reason to innovate, they're never going to bother.
@Geoff. Milking a cash cow or flogging a dead horse? To repeatedly make the same game for a dwindling audience is not good economics. It's like if movies only ever made Die Hard or Die Hard clones. You'd find that cinema goers would start to become a similar type - mostly young adult males. In doing so you would be slamming the door in the face of a massive untapped market.
THink this article shows a lack of understanding of the industry. At the moment console developers are in limbo in terms of the development cycle, there is no news on the next generation of hardware so for now they are just pushing out tried and trusted sequels to keep ticking over until the new consoles come. Besides the fact that Watch Dogs, Beyond, Star Wars 1313, the Last of us, Rayman and Halo 4 (new developers, new settings, new enemies and new mechanics) looked great. Besides the fact you totally missed the main theme of e3; year of the bow.
guy's lets all chill forget this shit and all play some minecraft
It’s difficult not to disagree with some of these comments. There are a lot of cynical games companies rehashing the same old games, but in the past few years we’ve had games like Fez, Bastion, Limbo, Skyrim, and Braid pushing the boundaries of game design and creating new experiences. The simple issue is the some people enjoy these macho twitchy games, and as long as people are buying them, why are designers going to try something different? The arguments you’ve raised don’t just apply to gaming, but to everything creative in our culture: music, art, books, TV, films – they are awash with generic, soulless products that do not innovate or push boundaries. This does not mean that the mainstream is dead or dying, nor does it mean that new innovations are rendered impossible. Is mainstream gaming moribund? Only when the mainstream itself has its day.
Mainstream gaming is dead. But you've completely forgotten about indie gaming.
I somewhat agree with this article. Gaming industry today continues to produce new innovations and creativity despite the narrowing gap to generate new ideas in the competitive marketplace. There are numerous games that I look forward too. However, when I think of games becoming "mainstream" I think of more games are being pushed out as FPS OR TPS shooters, more action packed, and more DLCs in order to please a wider audience and generate more revenue. Also games are also becoming a lot easier for that very same reason. Games like MOH,COD (especially),Halo, and most other shooters generate relatively little new ideas and are essentially destroying the gaming industry.Releasing the same old shit every year under a different name...I wish producers actually take their time like the Japanese and spend at least 2+ years into developing a game before marketing it to the wider audience
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