............this new marketing campaings to make the games look "trendy" Whos to blame for? EA While the "game arent just for nerds" thing started way back in the Genesis era (with those ads) what we are seeing today is much bigger and complex What EA is doing now is a series of procedures created by the music industry (if you can call THAT an industry) in the 80s. The pop wave started a series of marketing strategies only seen before in the military propaganda (to be more expecific, nazi propaganda). Now music wasnt only for small studios, corporation wanted a piece of the action too, so they brought the heavy artillery. Now is pretty common to see a pop idol created from scratch only to last a couple of years and then be trown away like the human trash he really is (and the ads didnt let you see). Theres a complety battery of studies about this tactics, all of them for corporate use. It was in the 90 that this tactics were brought to the movie industry, and now we can see the results: overpriced, overhyped bad-writen movies and a about-to-collapse [movie] industry. Today we see how this is being brought to the games industry, first by EA and now by M$ (the special in Mtv). The result: almost the same that movie industry This, united to the fact that development costs are increasing dramaticaly is goin to sunk the next generation: crappy and repetitive games with a high price tag are goin to socavate the entusiasm for games of both the casual and hardcore gamers, thus causing a collapse in game sell and another crash to the industry. You may think "this is imposible, [the] game industry is its highest point of prosperity ever" Well, most ppl thought the same about the .Com, and look.... Its when the exploitation of a new market comes to this high levels that a collapse is possible.
Im not angry, it that the way the corporations always go and ruin a bussines only to get some easy money just piss me off :smt096
...For me the saddest day was when $ONY bought into Creation Records, but there was dick all I could do about it, life goes on.
What i mean is that whats happening now is irreversible: as long as this bussines remain lucrative theres goin to be ppl around it triyin to get as most as they can of it. See what Mtv was 15 years ago, and look what its now. At the beggining they were based around the underground culture, now they are around corporate institutions Just look at things like "Liquid television" back in the early 90s and compare to what Mtv is now: a bunch of product propaganda: everything is supported by mayor corporations like motorola, HP, MS, EA, etc...... Like agent smith sez: "its inevitable"
Gaming will never be cool & trendy. Companies have been trying for forever but they will never succeed. Gaming is the pastime of geeks, some people try to pretend otherwise but if you play games you are a geek and are in the same catergory as train spotters & Dungeons & dragons players. Im not ashamed, im a geek & proud of it (^_^) If people are worried about looking cool while playing games then they really dont deserve to be playing them, games are about only one thing and thats fun.
heh. I think this song I found to today would fit good here ^^ Adam Freeland - We Want Your Soul (.mov file, requires quicktime) oh, and while we're talking about EA just heard that they are from September (I think) Valves (you know the half life guys) new publisher.. :no ops.. forgot about the link: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/jul/1164361.htm
Because they never went trought such ads campaigns. SEGA never went to Mtv (nor any other network) and aired a special show for the [by the time] upcoming 32X and Saturn. Neither nintendo with the Ultra/N64. Back in the old 16bit days they barely tried to catch on with the preteen audience trough some wise (yet pretty soft) jokes, nothing more complex that the ones you could see in cartoons. They [the game industry] never tried to appeal to the mainstream as much as today PD: as a study says "teens dont know shit about themselves, if you tell`em what to like, they`ll like it!"
If its going to collapse, save your money to buy the devkits the bankrupted dev companies will be selling.
YOu said it mate. There's nothing cool about playing games. It's all about the fun that can be had and thats it. I also agree with the comment that teens know shit about anything even though they think they do. When I think back to my teens I thought I knew it all. How wrong I was. Yakumo
JTI2K is right. But then again, I'm proud to be a geek. I mean, what we should do is maybe invent an XTreme Cool sport that trendy people are all gonna like. We'll call it "Cordless Bungee Jumping". Trust me, it'll improve the world. As for us geeks, freaks, and simply different people, we play what we want, when we want it. The industry doesn't want to pander to us. They can't. We cannot be manipulated or typecast. We're free from the marketing because we know ourselves, and cannot be told to base our self worth in any pattern of consumption and behaviour. JTI2K, are you by any chance a Communication Science or Sociology major?
You know, this might have been true when we were kids in the 80s and 90s, but not anymore. Have you seen anyone under the age of 20 who doesn't play video games? If anything gaming in one form or another is readily becoming a respectable activity (gasp!) Even my mother plays PC games once in a while. I think what JTI2K is getting angry about is a reflection of this. Now that more and more people are starting to play games, more and mroe games are being created with the "average" gamer in mind. Games are being "dumbed down," so to speak. The symptoms are all there: 1) Endless repeats of a successful formula: One innovative game comes out and for a few years everybody has to have one just like it. The current trend is of the free roaming, GTA type, before that FPS, before that fighting games. 2) Games are becoming easier and simpler, with stupid people in mind: Make it easy, make it simple, make it so everyone can play it decently on their first try. No need to memorize 128 hit combos when all you have to do is hit one button over and over again. UULLLLTTRAAA COOMMBBBOO! As a result of this, the games that do require a learning curve (like say, RPGs,) are not only getting squeesed into a smaller and smaller specialty genre, but are becomming increasingly complex to the point where the uninitiated has no clue what the hell is going on. But that's just my opinion. 3) Trendy games based on hot liscences are becoming the norm instead of the excpetion: Back in the day we got maybe two or three Movie NES games a year. Now every single game that comes out is based on a movie or TV show. They're even starting to make games from old movies (like Scarface, which was actually a pretty dope game.) While we may get some cool games out of this trend, it kind of makes me think that the people out in game programming land aren't really trying to come up with any original ideas. 4) Content in games is based more upon what sells as opposed to what is fun/gives the best playability: Pack it full of blood and gore, tits, or throw gangster rappers in it and it'll sell based on that alone. Don't have to make the game fun or anything. Of course, all of these things have been happening for years. The difference was that there were plenty of good games to offset the crappy ones. But if every fucking game that comes out stars a hit Gangster rapper who violently carjacks people with his well endowed girlfriend who can do 128 hit combos just by pressing the square button over and over again on his way to complete missions in a free roaming world who's storyline ties right in with this summer's big blockbuster, then I think it's time to maybe, play some SNES instead. I don't know. I am tired now.
I want to see more "Maker" type games. FPS maker, Adventure maker, and whatever else would be good with it.
Hawanja is, once again, right on the money here. I haven't bought a new game in ages (though I do yearn for Ace Combat 5 and Disgaea) because I simply cannot see the Return over Investment in most of what's for sale. It used to be that there were no games designed to be mega-hits, but that became mega-hits because of quality and not so much hype. But yeah, now everyone has videogames. Games themselves are nothing special anymore, in terms of being an alternative market. Gaming going mainstream makes it like the movie industry somehow - and that also means the prevalence and even success of formulaic and marketable products without a soul, and their dominance in the market, and also, the reduction in the amount of games that aren't treated thas much as a product - instead of being treated as a game first and foremost. Too much marketing always means this, because marketers underestimate the brainpower of audiences, and generally, stupidity sells according to their rules. With there being lots of confused customers needing to be told what to buy... well, it's less likely everyday they'll take a masterpiece of gaming home, if the formulaic game sells more and there's more ads on MTV and stuff. One has to feel disenfranchised if one of their lifestyles' staples is taken by the corporate entitiy and turned into another Hollywood that, once again, will begin to ignore the mediatic needs of the actual afficionados in exchange for pandering to the lowest common denominator. Edit... But then again, I first saw FF7 because of an ad on KTLA or MTV, which I saw on cable. Go figure.
I want games that don't follow a trend but i also don't want a game that is hyped beyond its mean like brute force. Gameing shouldn't be on MTV.
they even made the man with the bajonet on his rifle wrong (the cover picture of Medal Of Honour or something like that or battlefield 2 ) since that knife is from WW1 my father owns that type of weapon from WW1 so again EA can kiss my dark hairy bottom.
