"Epic Gaming" -- is it ruining video gaming?

[kn]

Cerise said:

kn said:

It's interesting to see so many titles coming out that are blockbuster budget, high expectation games. When I look at next-gen gaming with $25+ million budgets, phenomenal graphics, intense visual art styles. etc., I wonder if we are witnessing the financial undoing of the industry as a whole. Sony is now joining Microsoft in the "lose billions" on their next-gen platform (hardware-wise). We now have a few very high budget games this fall that have not performed well... I won't name titles but there are some obvious ones that come to mind... Where I'm going with this is that I've recently purchased several games that are amazing graphically but fall very short in terms of content. The multiplayer aspect is there, but I don't do that... We are seeing way too many 6 hour single player $60 games for me to continue this. I bought these games on Toys R Us's buy 2 get 1 free sale so my net was actually $40/title which is better, but still $40 for six hours is STEEP. Minimum-wagers need not apply.

The industry, in my opinion, needs to return to gameplay fundamentals. First, a solid story. Second, solid gameply to back up the story. Third, enough content to keep the game engaing through AT LEAST 20 hours of gameplay. Lastly come graphics and sound to round out the whole. Yes, graphics are important, but if the game ends up being 6 hours because the budget was blown on graphics/art/sound, I'm not interested.

This isn't a "gaming over graphics" argument though it may seem that it is... What I'm saying is that I think developers have become far too focused on presentation and are leaving real gameplay behind.... The current generation seems to be guilty of taking this trend to the extreme...

That sounds really sad. If that's true, how would they fix it?

~Cerise

I think one of the easier ways to "fix it" is to use the console's hardware for more than just pretty graphics.  Sure, presentation is nice, but more levels, better written stories, unique art styles, etc. are just as good.  I would be fine if textures repeated more often and some of the high end stuff was just left out in favor of more "game".  Mass effect looks to be the first game out that really seems to be able to accomplish both so maybe there is hope, but I do think that if developers were to say "hey, we can reach near photo-realism if we push the hardware near 100 OR we can back down to using 75% and focus more time on gameplay and more levels" I'd vote for otption number 2.  I just finished stranglehold and though the graphics weren't the best, they were more than good enough and I'm CERTAIN that they could have built more levels and extended the game beyond 6 hours or so... especially considering they used a third party engine which they obviously didn't modify much.