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| Courtesy Gamenesia.com |
Recently there's been clamour for
building games as with mass market appeal. Every year gaming grows larger and
larger, having since passed all other forms of entertainment in total
revenues, yearly. Digital consumption has increased by incredible
margins in just the last 3 years, with no sign of slowing. Yet,
somehow there's a need to make games “mass-market” appealing –
even though they're the biggest market that exists in entertainment.
At what point do we ask, how long till
anyone cares about the quality of games – their narrative,
character development, design aesthetics and staying power – in
lieu of what can only be described as desire for more money? And,
while everyone likes more money, is there really a need to sacrifice
the very qualities that made gaming such a lucrative business in the
first place?
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| That is a crap-ton (pun intended) of Brown. Joystiq.com |
As the years go by, I begin to wonder
what happened to the creative minds that brought us products like
Heart of Darkness, or the surprisingly fun Medievil –
even games like Fear Effect. I understand the need to increase
quarterly revenue and profit margins, though the continued increase
of lower-quality games isn't necessary. After all, how much of the color Brown can a mass market find appealing? Years later and it's still one of the
most common colors of mainstream games. The level of engagement,
immersion, and narrative have become scant, but they do appear
occasionally, throughout the years. Offerings such as the original
Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Batman Arkham Asylum, Psychonauts,
The Walking Dead,by TellTale
games and some others in the last 5-7 years, keep the heart
hopeful. They're fairly far-and-few-between, however. With the
ever-growing casual/social and mobile markets making a steady
increase, year over year, the sheer number of easily cashable
products have become the norm.
As far as more detailed console and PC
offerings, the sheer amount of IP milking, and banking on only the
most likely-to-succeed titles means a steady decline in overall rich
games. Lets be serious for a moment, for the nay-sayers – What
games compromise the top spots for most sales, marketing, and/or
overall exposure in the last 5 years, that weren't representative of
a bundle? If you said the Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Assassin's
Creed, Mass Effect, Black Ops, HALO, or Gears of War, for
instance, then you'd be in the same conundrum. Yes, they all have
great games in their respective series, but for better or worse,
they've all become rehashed, over-milked IP's. Ironically, for
instance, most FPS games have not only virtually the same marketing art – they often all look and play exactly the same - the most common appeal to mass market.
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| Apparently, mass-market appeal Terabass -Wikipedia |
EA's CCO, Richard Hilleman thinks video games should be mass market appealing – though he doesn't
think they've reached that pinnacle, yet. What does any of that have
to do with the big chunk of yada-yada I gave in the aforementioned
paragraphs? It's the core of the issue at hand – to much
focus on monetization to court creativity, narrative, and quality
user-experience. We have a market that produces over 67 billion a year, yet they want more, even during rounds of layoffs,
and poor quarterly performance by some major companies. It's
time to improve on the quality of the user experience in every faucet
of gameplay. We can always come back to “mass market appeal”
later, when there's a reason for people to actually feel the appeal.
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