After much deliberation over whether or not it was honestly worth it write 3 different articles that would all show the same disdain and angst towards what is largely the same problem, I have elected to write one article. So, you get one semi-interesting read, rather than three boring, whiny article.
Microsoft - The Propagators
I struggle even caring about their conference. It's clear that I don't fit in any of the companies demographics, but this was the most droll. Essentially, one company got up there, screaming about their motion control, while bragging about their exclusives, which are almost all shooters. I really have the least to say about the Xbox 360. Whilst I would say it's my current favorite console, I would regard "favorite" as a word that I have to use to describe what console I spend the most time with. All in all, their hand revealed they are the propagators of the industry's rut. Exclusivity, followed by DLC, followed by sequel makes for a very boring, repetitive market. If you didn't see any of those sequels coming, you are not good at anything.
Sony - The Ignorant
What was Sony trying to prove? Their glorified audio books weren't that impressive, being more for children and total gimmicks, and they also showed predictability in their lot. I'm going to throw it right up and say that I am definitely Sony biased, but I really can't see anything that came out of their conference as really exciting. Where was The Last Guardian?
Both of these companies took their show to prove they had nothing really interesting and that they have new consoles in development, which is really what they were lacking. Any sort of showstoppers. At the other end of the spectrum...
Nintedo - The Soulless
The Wii U is still coming! And it looks even worse than it did one year ago! I had a hard time keeping my mouth closed during their show. Not because of surprise or excitement, but in total disbelief people cheered at all. From Nintendo, we got the same old shit they've been slinging since the end of the Gamecube. Nothing they were producing was new or innovative or creative. 4 new Mario games, all continuing already established "spin-off" titles, with Wii Sports getting a re-release and being retitled as "Nintendoland", which is...just an awful name. Oh, but look! Nintendo is finally getting into the ONLINE scene! Just like the HD party, they show up years late and with what? An online community that functions identically to Twitter and Facebook's awful spawn? Maybe I'm being preemptive, but I just don't think it's going to pan out like they touted it. Hardly any of my real world friends play the same exact games I do, and hardly any of them give a shit enough to post tips about how to beat "a particularly difficult boss". How do I know? Because I don't give a shit to help them; I'll go immediately to GameFAQs where someone who has been writing many FAQs already has posted three different ways to beat said level, or boss, or collection fest -- after all, this is Nintendo we are talking about here!
These..."innovations" in the industry are actually, I believe, deteriorating the word "innovative". The Kinect would be awesome if it worked well at all, the Move is just too much stuff and shares all the same problems, and the Wii offered a controller that did something whenever you moved the slightest bit. Now I'll have an iPad that's white and has buttons and Nintendo's logo on it? No, I just can't believe this is at all worth getting excited about.
Maybe it's not the companies I have a problem with, but rather all you little shits you eat this shit up. There's an unpleasant expectation of the next thing to come when the current thing just came out, and it's this consistent future thinking that makes people who work on these creations feel like shit. Remember that one time you made a macaroni picture for your mother and she hung it up on the fridge just last week? What if, instead of believing it was at all anything impressive, she instead looked at it, sold it to the first bidder, and asked, "Alright, so when will the next one be done? And I think you should honestly make the graphics better this time, while also improving the gameplay. And what the fuck was up with the ending? It wasn't how I wanted it to end, so try to conform to my standards perfectly, or I'll tell all my friends you smell like shit and have no talent."
""It was tough for me to see that every time I made a new game, people automatically assumed that a sequel was coming." - Masahiro Sakurai, after his resignation from Nintendo dev HAL Laboratories as a result of the consistent sequelization.
No comments:
Post a Comment