It shouldn't surprise you...

That the gaming industry, much like any other industry is in a constant state of flux. It's never stable and constantly grows. Fads pop in and out and people have ever changing ideas on their ideal game, technology, controls. The Console Wars exist because of a ever changing arrangement of ideas and innovations. But while most of them are great, some of them are hidiously under developed, under thought, or downright awful.

I present to you my list of innovations that are so awful one has to wonder who was the genius who imagined that? These are the five innovations that make me facepalm because almost nothing generated from these innovations have been good.

***DISCLAIMER: The list below expresses the Opinion of NightstrikerX, you are entitled to your own opinion and encouraged to share. It makes me sad that I have to include this, but it's the internet. I know people are going to shout out "But X is a great innovation! You're dumb!". If you think something is great and I don't. Cool, go enjoy that feature. I'll continue to dislike it's use"

Starting the List is Number 5. Regenerating Health...

Regenerating Health is often thought to have been pioneered by the Halo Series. Whether that's true or not doesn't concern me (I think it appeared in a playstation bond game before. At least that's what my memory thinks), what does concern me is the over zealous use of Regenerating health. What first appeared to be a acceptable futuristic technology, a personal shield that protected you from all kinds of harm soon became a legion of X-men's Wolverine. Yes, now you! The average civilian can heal gunshots, wounds, and near death experiences caused by careless nearby explosions by standing still and channeling forth some sort of amazing mystical energy that recovers and heals all. It's overuse has critically reduced the overall difficulty of many games, allowing for newer players to challange some of the hardest gaming modes with moderate ease. It just takes patience, not skill.

Number 4 brings us to Free MMORPGs, and Paying for them.

Massively Multiplayer Online Time-suckers. I mean Role Playing games. They are everywhere, some are free. Some you have to pay for. Some you have to pay for for certain features. All of them I dislike, why? Well read forth VGChartz.

Free2Play generally include some type of item store. Often the items found can be completely worthless like clothing for your avatar, or something useful. Like the ultra sword of asskickery. Most often you'll find things like uber health potions, XP scrolls, Skill resets, and other misc. items that give your character a bit of a boost over other characters who don't feel like paying for things. My issue with this one is that those who are addicted to the MMORPG and like it alot generally end up buying these items.

This creates a unfair balance between those who have said paid items and who do not have said paid items. Now MMORPGs are all about freedom, within limits. You're free to choose how your character proceeds forth into this world. You can bash your enemies with a club and drag them away, zap them into dust and sweep up the ash later, or hang in the local tavern hooking up with the *ahem* getting carried away. Now, it's been proven that if you give people any type of freedom, they're first instinct is to abuse it horrendously. This does not escape the MMORPG world. So if you give people a unfair advantage in the form of paid items, and freedom. You get overpowered and overzealous idiots who ravage the world creating harm and pain for all those who don't have the items. Untill they submit and get the items themselves. Or live a existance of death.

Such items would be better obtained via quests and challanges. Something to enhance gameplay. Instead, we have options to enhance someone's wallet. I suppose that's the price of "free".

Number 3 is all about watching your games instead of playing them. Yes, Cutscenes.

Ninja Gaiden was famous for it's cutscenes back in the glory days of the NES. It has all right to be as well, they were short, sweet and generally included a closeup of Ryu's face, generally very angry looking.

NSX Says: "I know what you're thinking. No you cannot escape the glare by hiding behind your chair. He has x-ray vision."

These cutscenes helped tell the story while the gamer was immersed in the gameplay of the game, often one had to read the manual back in those days to get the gist of it. Or the game had some kind of exposition at the very start that said. "Someone's missing, your some kinda hero. Do something about it", or some variation of that.

However today, it's often stated that some developers rather make interactive movies instead of video-games. I'm looking at you Konami and Square-Enix! Some series are notorious to include quite literally a movie's worth of non-interactive cutscenes to move the plot forward. Sometimes it does it well, other times it does it poorly. I'll leave you to be the judge about that.

But here is some braincandy for you. Metal Gear Solid 4 has roughly 90 something minutes of cutscenes? Well, they said feature length. Imagine if they put 100% of the budget into the cutscenes. Thus making it a movie. Would you have enjoyed that? What if they put 100% of the budget into the gameplay, incorperating it's story well as you played the game. Would you have enjoyed that?

Number 2 takes us to the world of Simulation.

Remember the days of taking off in a airplane and soaring the skies with a joystick because you have no plane experience and likely should not be let outside at all? I do. Although my dad played with the flight simulators and I just hung outside jumping off trees. I also remember the days of making a city, amusement park, transporation empire, or various other things that most people won't ever do in their lifetime. This was simulation in it's prime. Being able to do things you normally would never do in real life. Because when you're in a cubicle for your entire life, it's nice to pretend your the mayor of some city. The idea was to think big.

Then entered the "life" simulation games. I blame Nintendo for this one. Nintendo and everyone who has ever bought Nintendogs, Cats, and any other animal simulation game out there. Not to mention ubisoft's legendary list of Imaginez game. These are not practical simulation games, these are real life situations that can happen to many people in every day situation. Instead of simulating you have a dog. Why not adopt a real one? It's much more rewarding and if you save a animal in the process. Great job!

But instead you have many people who prefer the digital polygon mess that waggles it's tail on command and never needs any attention that can't be solved with a button; preferabilty the off one.

And to finish off my list. Motion Control.

The Ironic part about this one is that not only is it number 1 on this list. It's also number 1 on my list of GOOD innovations. So let me rephrase this one.

SLAPPED ON MOTION CONTROL.

This is based purely off observation, but if I don't like what I see. I most likely won't like what I experience in the near future. Xbox 360 and PS3 are guilty for this one. After seeing the wii's success with it's wiimote and it's motion control. They decided to jump on the motion control bandwagon and come up with all sorts of crazy ideas to slap motion control on their systems.

And I put heavy emphasis "Slap"

Because that's what these products feel. Suddenly I am curious if my PS3 was designed originally to be with or without motion control? Did they rush out the product early to be competitive? Was my xbox 360 complete when I bought it? It feels like a big slap to the face of me the consumer.

Not only that, but if they slap me and my product with these attachments after the product is released. Then clearly games will be divided between using said motion control and without using said motion control. Unlike where in the wii, almost all games use the motion control in some way or another, there are likely going to be games that exclusively feature it or not, and since many people will not be interested in buying something extra to play a single game. It most likely won't go over well... well, in short. It feels like wasted R&D dollars.

I hope you enjoyed this read as much as I enjoyed writing it. Overall, post your thoughts on my bottom 5 innovations and post your own bottom 5. I'm interested to see what other people think about what's destroying gaming. Jus remember.

INNOVATIONS. NOT COMPANIES. Neither SONY MICROSOFT NOR NINTENDO are capable of destroying gaming. They all have a stake in it and they ALL have something to lose by destroying it.

~NightstrikerX

I deffinately agree that health regen after a few seconds makes FPS too easy, and there are very few FPS nowadays that don't do it.

MMORPG's (and paying for them) sounds lame to me, so I don't do it... Moving on.

Putting cutscenes and putting effort into a game's plot certainly isn't killing gaming, infact jsut the opposite.

Simulation games are one of my favourite genres, from Sim City back in the day, to newer franchsies like Animal Crossing. Simulation games are awesome, just because you don't like them doesn't mean they're killing gaming

Slapped on motion Control is no worse than button mashing.
QTE with waggle = QTE with button mashing
Fighting games where you flail around = Fighting games where you facepalm the controller and end up doing an incredibly powerful attack

I agree with all the points in this thread well everything except number 1. I like regenerating health as long as it fits in to the story of the game like Halo. But i dont like it when its a game like Call of Duty. Honestly how the hell do you heal yourself in the middle of combat??? Maybe a better solution is a hybrid solution. Easier difficulties in games could use a regenerating health system while Harder ones would use health packs :) then we can all be happy

@Scottie, don't get me wrong about cutscenes. I think that cutscenes in moderation are great, I'm talking more about games which feature, well. Feature-length cutscenes that would be much better suited at a movie instead of a game. It's like dividing your resources 50/50. Half for cutscenes, half for gameplay.

I don't buy movies to play the games that sometimes comes with it. I buy them to watch.
I don't buy games to watch the movie that sometimes comes with it. I buy them to play.

love this article - nicely done and very true!!

regenerating health has especially taken a lot of the intensity out of fps - gotta love valve stickin to the old school :D

I like regenerating health. if it's too easy slap on a harder difficulty or play multiplayer...

@ Nightstriker - fair enough that you don't enjoy them, but I still don't see how they're ruining gaming. There's still a lot of games that focus on the gaming for you to play

@ cura - Harder difficulties are not a good way to balance health regen. It ends up that the only way to make it hard enough is to make the player die in a single shot. And then it's no longer challenging, merely frustrating. And it is even worse for multiplayer than it is for single player. The only balanced way to play multiplayer is no healing or very limited healing (ie BattleField series)

In multiplayer without healing, a bad player will eventually get a few kills on a good player, in the ratio of how good they are.
In regen games, if a player is slightly better, then they should never die.
It's not fun to always lose and it's certainly not fun to always win

There are countless people out there who would love to have a pet animal but aren't allowed to, or love the idea of having the animal but don't want to actually take responsibility for a live pet. Enjoying a simulation game to make up for that is killing gaming?

The only point I agree with is paying for items in free MMO's. Everything else is way too subjective imo.

@scottie - Yep, but it's a bummer when someone like me tries to enjoy a series he's enjoyed alot in the past like star ocean. Just for the experience to be ruined by a 37 minute cut scene. Often these cutscenes feel although the developers has forgotten important aspects of the storyline though character dialog and decided to mush it all together at the last moment or something.

But you are very right in that there are many many titles that focus on gameplay over cutscene storytelling. But when you compare two games like tales of vesperia and star ocean 4. One which was more reliant on cutscenes and one which was more reliant on dialog. It makes you wonder why these feature length cutscenes are needed, and if they progress forth and become adopted more heavily. Will it actually do some damage to the industry?

On the flip side, it is a nice deal to spend 60 bucks and get half-movie half game. More value out of your buck overall.

@wfz - Yes, I agree that there are many who would like a pet animal but cannot. So a digital or robotic pet is a good substitute. But when games like Imaginez: Babysitter comes out. A line has been crossed.

There will always be "shovelware" type games, there have been since the beginning of gaming. I don't think they kill gaming, they just aren't very good tributes to gaming.