Why I Hate Games

Oh dear oh dear, this would be a triple-hit combo of tasks with nothing else in between. It's mainly because nothing has happened, unless you count Leicester market as an event. It's always full of overpriced retro games, and maybe I should snap some photos and blog it just for the heck of it...

BUT ANYWAY

Task 4 is about the future of videogames! Actually it's about 2000 and onwards, which so far has been pretty amazing with all the magic flashy graphics and such.

But I'm not going to talk about that today. My mind's elswhere and I have to guide it back by venting some feelings about the gaming world ...

I feel that games these days keep following the same time-old formulas for each genre, only occasionally trying something new. This whole subject is a bit too huge for me to get my dizzy student head around, I'm sure journalists take on this sort of thing as huge events and write books on it.

The other day I bought Quake 4, or rather I got it next-to-nothing when I bought all three Fallout games. I remember back to Quake 1, and especially Quake 2 which were regarded so highly at the time. They were these amazing steps up in terms of FPS gameplay, everyone seemed to love them both, there was much fanfare on their release, I played Quake 2 through and enjoyed it a lot. Now, Quake 4 was released... Well, I don't know how long ago. I missed its launch completely, nobody seemed to say a thing about it. In fact I didn't really know anything about it until that other day. What's the point Kitto?! Your blog suxxors!! But no, wait a moment, the point is that Quake 4 is the same thing all over again with better graphics, some NPCs and vehicles. The thing is, this time, there was no red carpet, screaming fans and a long legacy. It'll be forgotten - it already sort of has been.

And I really believe that's the direction everything's going. To quote Dean Learner, everything was new once - even history. People loved FPS games when Wolfenstein 3D came out, they loved them when Doom came out, then as I mentioned Quake, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life...

The problem is that people played them because they hadn't been done before. Eventually this feeling was going to wear off - there's no getting around it. Once you've played enough FPS games, you've played 'em all, so what's next? You can add things like dialogue, characters, vehicles, scripted sequences and up the graphics, and as these are added over time, slowly, ever so slowly, the same thing happens again. People get bored. If I speak for anybody, I speak for myself here.

Graphics are at a point where they're getting amazingly good, but as Ron Gilbert said, graphics are just the icing on the cake. The standard formula just doesn't seem to produce a good cake anymore - in fact most modern FPS games are the same thing in a different skin. Quake 4 takes place with a bunch of space marines on another planet. Half-Life 2 takes place in an urban Orwellian dystopia. Both have characters who talk to you, both involve you shooting at baddies, both involve vehicles and have some kind of basic storyline. Each has its own set of gimmicks. There's nothing really different apart from the setting and the look of the interactive display sort of thing. Everyone liked Half-Life 2's physics engine - soon that'll be standard in FPS games too, then what? Slowly, oh so slowly, they're running out of ideas.

Oooh, what a gloomy outlook this is. Well it is. I may only be talking about the FPS genre, but in many others the same thing is happening (Although some others generally provide more opportunities to be different, like with Real-Time Strategy for example, where it's usually possible to think up original changes to the standard fare).

Hmm, I begun this reading the words of my Tutor. What kind of games will we see in time? As the games industry starts shifting about, where are we all going? I'd love to answer, but this has been poking me for a while.

Next time! Next time, we're on track.