Every art form evolves, some more quickly than others, but the evolution is inevitable. So you can either learn, or fade away. So, here are some of the more important lessons in video gaming of 2012 that the industry needs to learn.
Give Gamers The Tools And Let Them Explore
When there were open world games this year, like Assassin’s Creed III, they invariably worked best when you weren’t forced to hit points A, B, and C by the plot, but chose points of interest on the map and went after them yourself. We’re still waiting for a game that decides cutscenes are totally unnecessary, and instead lets the plot play out in audio tapes and players discovering things on their own as they explore and/or stab. But until then, we’re happy to settle for games like Dishonored, where your overall path is on rails but how you deal with the obstacles on it is up to you.
Japanese Developers Can Make A Great Game… But They’re At A Cultural and Financial Disadvantage
Japanese developers put out some great games this year. Sega released the witty, well-designed third person shooter Binary Domain. Capcom put out Dragon’s Dogma, a melding of the old school RPG and new-school sandbox fantasy game that was frustrating at first but glorious when it started clicking. Even experiments like Asura’s Wrath, even if they weren’t worth $60, were worth playing. So Japan is still vital in gaming. It just needs to find a wider audience.
PC Gaming Will Return… Once Valve Builds A Console
Valve spent 2012 pushing Steam and working on a Steam Box, which has been paying off this week at the Consumer Electronics Show. But to be frank, Valve is the only major company that gives a crap about PC gaming or PC gamers at this point. Granted, when the Steam Box comes, everybody is going to buy one. But until then, PC gaming is stuck in a niche.
Free-To-Play Will Be A Fad Until There’s A Free To Play Game Worth Playing
CEOs like Ben Cousins have a few good points about the industry, but they have so far failed to back it up with a game worth playing. Cousins can tell us the console is dying all he wants: Do you play any games from his company, ngmoco? Do you even know what games they make?
Therein lies the dilemma of free-to-play games: If you constantly rattle the donations cup and force players to buy items to keep playing, you’ve made a crappy game that no one wants to play. And if you make a fun game that people love and rely on the decency and generosity of mobile players, you get screwed.
Enough With The Dubstep
There were some beautiful orchestral scores and cleverly selected pop music; Sleeping Dogs comes to mind as an example of both. There was also way too much dubstep. Dishonored has a dubstep trailer. Far Cry 3 ruined an entire mission by cranking the Skrillex to the point where to play the game stealthily, you have to turn the music off. Yes, we understand it’s hip. So were fingerstaches, and you didn’t use them.
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Speaking of japenese developers and dubstep have you seen the Nintendo dubstep experience?
The problem with sandbox though is the limitation it places on the story. Suddenly, any sort of time restraint is thrown out the window with sandboxes, because a timer means players can’t stop to launch themselves from a swing set. I’ve yet to see a sandbox game do the story as well as a linear one, with Arkham Asylum coming the closest. And even that the story suffered when you’re told “Hurry up and save the guards” and you dick around for half an hour collecting joker question marks.
This isn’t a drawback for me, really, since, let’s face it, most video game stories are awful. If Far Cry 3 were on a clock, the “friends” I’m supposed to rescue would be dead by the time I got around to a mission.
Fallout 3 had a pretty good story for a sandbox game, and it worked really well with letting you do whatever the hell you wanted. The only mission that told you to hurry was rescuing reillys rangers from the roof and rescue the people from bigtown. Other that that every mission was basically, when you’re in the area go check this out. Even the story mission had parts where it was plausible for the characters to go about their business until you showed up.
I thought Far Cry 3 was an amazing sandbox game since you could go level up, do missions and ect without hitting the main story for a while.
Regarding sandbox games and storylines, I’ve played at least 50 hours of Skyrim and I have no idea what the plot is. Something to do with Dragons and a civil war you never actually see.
Go to your local bookstore. Find a book with a drawing that looks like it belongs on the side of a van. Read it. There’s the plot to Skyrim.
What really needs to change in gaming is the MSRP. If companies like EA had their way, there would be no Steam sales, and no holiday sales on Amazon, and when companies (like EA) have the funds to bogart the industry with their own distribution services (such as ditching Steam for Origin, where prices remain at their original MSRP year-round) I get the chills.
I really hope that this backfires on the console industry and people just stop buying video games, but that’s a dead dream (see: Call of Duty and every sports game ever).
I agree with you. It’s been fun to see how Steam got a lot of people buying and playing games they never would have tried before. The game studios sold many copies of games to people they never would have. I don’t know business much, but in my mind it seems like, they don’t have to print anything since it is a download. Costs are minimal to them, but they are making money they never would have at full price. I really hope it catches on.