Okay, first post! Let's start it off with an optimistic look on gaming's future!
6. The boom in enthusiast press
This one's more personal to me, but I have to say, I love game writing. I love reading it, I love writing about games, I devour anything I can get my hands out.
In all honesty, I've never gotten more joy out of the internet than reading articles on Actionbutton, socksmakepeoplesexy, insert credit, Gamespite, and Hardcore Gaming 101. These kind of things open my eyes to tons of new games, design ideas, game history, etc; all while managing to keep me entertained. This kind of writing is of the utmost quality, and I hope modern game designers see how amazing they are as resources.
Yes there are plenty of bad game writers (probably myself included) but man, if modern game designers listened to these good writers, instead of them or the Metacritic score, I think gaming as a whole could be even better.
5. Fair Difficulty
The days of stuff like stage 6-1 in Ninja Gaiden are over. The kind of crap you could get away with in games during the 8 and 16-bit days are pretty much over. And yes, while it's true that we get games that go a little too far with stuff like auto-checkpoints and auto saving, I think games these days are a lot more fair at telling the player how to play the game and what to do right. When this is done right we get games like God Hand. A game that does a great job telling the player what they are doing right and wrong,while having fair checkpoint placement.
Because of this, we're getting games that manage to make the player master the mechanics and concepts of the game, but not have to play the same levels over and over again.
Honestly, I only see this for the better. Games can still be challenging like the old days, but without the padding or bullshit behind them
I believe that fair difficulty only makes games better, and with the way games are going, I think we've got a bright future ahead of us.
4. Classic Gaming is now hip.
I love that the general collective conscious of gaming is to respect classic and modern games. Each year I go to Portland Retro Game Expo, it gets bigger and the age groups are widening and widening.
And because people are respecting the past, we're seeing modern games be influenced by smart game design of every era of gaming. We're seeing revivals of shmups, new age platformers, 2D beat-em up, tons of great stuff. Games like Ikaruga have the best parts of old school games, but also manage to be modern and fair.
And hey, when all the hipsters realize that they don't like classic games, and they were only playing them to be cool, they'll give all their stuff to me. I am a genius.
3. The Fighting Game Renaissance
As of 2009 we have these fighting games:
Street Fighter IV and all it's counterparts
The Blazblue franchise.
Tekken 6 and Tag 2
Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown
Melty Blood: Actress Again and the rest of the MB games.
Vanguard Princess
King of Fighters XIII
Marvel vs Capcom 3/ Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Soulcalibur V
Chaos Code
Skullgirls
Phantom Breaker
Aquaplazza
Demon's Bride
3rd Strike Online
Mortal Kombat 9
Marvel vs Capcom 2 Online
Street Fighter II: Turbo: HD Remix
Arcana Heart 3
and Kevin Bacon
In other words: It's a damn good time to like fighting games.
2. Accessibility
This isn't so much casual gaming, (although I do and don't like that, but for different reasons) but rather making new games easier to get into than before. These days, modern games manage to do a great job making themselves simple enough to approach, but keep people hooked by their depth.
This is especially apparent in modern fighting games, where designers are purposely approachable. Doing stuff like inculding in-game tutorials that teach you how to actually play the game.
Sometimes designers go too far with this, making games pretty much interactive instruction manuals, but there are so many games that can actually say they are “easy to learn, hard to master.”
And I see that as a very, very, good thing.
1. The Indie Revolution
Indie games are starting to become an active threat to the AAA game industry. Not just because there's plenty of high quality games coming out, many of which are effortlessly creative, contain good writing and are fun. But more because they're more influential than people think.
Examples?
We've seen games like Bastion tell stories better than almost any game prior.
We've seen the rise of maso-core platformers like Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV
We've seen Cave Story raise the standard of what it means to be freeware game.
We've seen Skullgirls, the fighting game that might give Capcom and Namco a run for their money.
We've seen Minecraft, a game that's still in beta, and go from being a fun game that people played, to having it's own convention,
We've seen League of Legends bring the MOBA mainstream, becoming so popular that here's a $5,000,000 prize pool at next year's Dreamhack.
There is so much right with the Indie Revolution, and I don't see it ending any time soon. If anyone's moving gaming in the right direction, it's these guy and gals.
Thanks for reading.
6. The boom in enthusiast press
This one's more personal to me, but I have to say, I love game writing. I love reading it, I love writing about games, I devour anything I can get my hands out.
In all honesty, I've never gotten more joy out of the internet than reading articles on Actionbutton, socksmakepeoplesexy, insert credit, Gamespite, and Hardcore Gaming 101. These kind of things open my eyes to tons of new games, design ideas, game history, etc; all while managing to keep me entertained. This kind of writing is of the utmost quality, and I hope modern game designers see how amazing they are as resources.
Yes there are plenty of bad game writers (probably myself included) but man, if modern game designers listened to these good writers, instead of them or the Metacritic score, I think gaming as a whole could be even better.
5. Fair Difficulty
The days of stuff like stage 6-1 in Ninja Gaiden are over. The kind of crap you could get away with in games during the 8 and 16-bit days are pretty much over. And yes, while it's true that we get games that go a little too far with stuff like auto-checkpoints and auto saving, I think games these days are a lot more fair at telling the player how to play the game and what to do right. When this is done right we get games like God Hand. A game that does a great job telling the player what they are doing right and wrong,while having fair checkpoint placement.
Because of this, we're getting games that manage to make the player master the mechanics and concepts of the game, but not have to play the same levels over and over again.
Honestly, I only see this for the better. Games can still be challenging like the old days, but without the padding or bullshit behind them
I believe that fair difficulty only makes games better, and with the way games are going, I think we've got a bright future ahead of us.
4. Classic Gaming is now hip.
I love that the general collective conscious of gaming is to respect classic and modern games. Each year I go to Portland Retro Game Expo, it gets bigger and the age groups are widening and widening.
And because people are respecting the past, we're seeing modern games be influenced by smart game design of every era of gaming. We're seeing revivals of shmups, new age platformers, 2D beat-em up, tons of great stuff. Games like Ikaruga have the best parts of old school games, but also manage to be modern and fair.
And hey, when all the hipsters realize that they don't like classic games, and they were only playing them to be cool, they'll give all their stuff to me. I am a genius.
3. The Fighting Game Renaissance
As of 2009 we have these fighting games:
Street Fighter IV and all it's counterparts
The Blazblue franchise.
Tekken 6 and Tag 2
Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown
Melty Blood: Actress Again and the rest of the MB games.
Vanguard Princess
King of Fighters XIII
Marvel vs Capcom 3/ Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Soulcalibur V
Chaos Code
Skullgirls
Phantom Breaker
Aquaplazza
Demon's Bride
3rd Strike Online
Mortal Kombat 9
Marvel vs Capcom 2 Online
Street Fighter II: Turbo: HD Remix
Arcana Heart 3
and Kevin Bacon
In other words: It's a damn good time to like fighting games.
2. Accessibility
This isn't so much casual gaming, (although I do and don't like that, but for different reasons) but rather making new games easier to get into than before. These days, modern games manage to do a great job making themselves simple enough to approach, but keep people hooked by their depth.
This is especially apparent in modern fighting games, where designers are purposely approachable. Doing stuff like inculding in-game tutorials that teach you how to actually play the game.
Sometimes designers go too far with this, making games pretty much interactive instruction manuals, but there are so many games that can actually say they are “easy to learn, hard to master.”
And I see that as a very, very, good thing.
1. The Indie Revolution
Indie games are starting to become an active threat to the AAA game industry. Not just because there's plenty of high quality games coming out, many of which are effortlessly creative, contain good writing and are fun. But more because they're more influential than people think.
Examples?
We've seen games like Bastion tell stories better than almost any game prior.
We've seen the rise of maso-core platformers like Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV
We've seen Cave Story raise the standard of what it means to be freeware game.
We've seen Skullgirls, the fighting game that might give Capcom and Namco a run for their money.
We've seen Minecraft, a game that's still in beta, and go from being a fun game that people played, to having it's own convention,
We've seen League of Legends bring the MOBA mainstream, becoming so popular that here's a $5,000,000 prize pool at next year's Dreamhack.
There is so much right with the Indie Revolution, and I don't see it ending any time soon. If anyone's moving gaming in the right direction, it's these guy and gals.
Thanks for reading.
Definitely agree with all of those options. Especially the fair difficulty, not that a difficult game is bad. There's a difference between a game being actually challenging and hard, which I like to call kind of like "Fake challenging". For example, dishing out less damage on harder difficulties, but taking more damage from enemies when upping the difficulty from say, hard to really hard. Oh man, I better end right now or I'll be typing pages.
ReplyDeleteNice. :)
ReplyDelete