johnlucas on 18 March 2007
Diomedes1976 said:
AS tou put it this "revolution " spells doom for games with deep storytelling ,great artistic values and complex gameplay ....so it means doom for our beloved industry as we have know it .
Don't look at it that way.
When I first became aware of videogaming it was at the start of the 1980's and I was just out of toddlerdom. Pac-Man was the first videogame, well arcade game I ever saw. Flashy colors & wonky sounds, bright lights. Tailor made for kids, wouldn't you say? The cartoony case design only sealed the deal. Saw Donkey Kong a short time later & then saw home consoles in action only briefly visiting with some people my family knew. Then saw games in gamerooms & laundromats in my young schoolage years. I totally understood the value of 25 cents. Saw the mini-tabletop arcade LCDs. The Game & Watches & similar devices.
Gaming when I came up was all about scoring, high scores, putting your 3-letter initials in rankings, managing some tricky difficult game manuever, making sure you could keep it up for as long as possible, and besting your ability. Story was negligible if not nonexistent most of the time. Only frameworks at best. Games were easy to jump right in & start fiddling around with. No long intros or backstories.
I didn't have my own home console until I was 12 in 1988 with my NES. Grew up poor in the country so I had my old things to play with along with my imagination. The scoreboard aspect was fading out by the late 80's but it was still there. But now the objects of the game was to beat it. To get to the end after you beat the "bosses".
Stories began becoming more fleshed out in the late 80's & early 90's until all of that stuff from the arcade days was a distant memory. Now I played games for the challenge but also to watch the cinemas put together & to feel the emotion of the characters.
Soon though game became more about story than game. Game was just the framework to advance the story.
Things had changed.
They will always change.
The people who saw Pac-Man & the like on the horizon probably lamented the fading out of complex thinking adventures. The chess match quality of games giving way to this reflex-freak, herky-jerky, cartoony arcade mess. Games were becoming more mindless than the stuff they were used to. Their world had changed as well.
Games from older eras won't stop being made but they won't take the same precedence as they once did. Zelda Twlight Princess' sales are shocking in a way. You'd think they'd sell more being the gold standard of games but no these little simple titles are having the edge & lasting power in sales not the masterpiece variety of game.
It's just a changing of the guard. Not the doom of the industry.
In fact it will refreshen the industry ensuring it lasts a little longer.
Don't be afraid of the change. I've been through many of them but I'm still here gaming.
John Lucas
Words from the Official VGChartz Idiot
WE ARE THE NATION...OF DOMINATION!