IGN Top 25 Consoles -- TOP 5......SHOCKING WINNER! (Atari 2600 > PS2)!!

[MaxwellGT2000]

KungKras said:
^ I agree with most of what you said. There is still "soul" left in video games due to the fact that all of the the console companies aren't just subsidiaries of huge conglomerations and that there are people like those you mentioned.

But you can already now see that the industry is becoming more ... well soulless. Just look at Blizzard. They rewrote the original Starcraft from the ground up just because fans complained about it. Now they laugh at those same fans when they complain about LAN being removed from SC2.

Another way you can notice it is with all this DLC stuff, or with companies trying ridiculous DRM stuff like in Spore. Big companies are good at marketing stuff for the mainstream, but they are also good at milking consoumers.

So although there is still plenty of "soul" left, it is dissapearing, at least as it looks now. I still have hope that the trend will change towards gaming being more "soulful" again though.

Oh I totally agree, though the thing about LANs is they're becoming more and more useless, I still love having the LAN ability but it's not like the days of 56k where you can't have 8 people connect to the net and play in the same room that way, honestly it's better since a group of friends can play in one room still and you've got a friend that can't make it to the LAN they can hop online and still join in.  So far I'm 100% satisfied with what I see of SC2.

As for the soul leaving, that has a lot to do with less innovation in gaming as there were back 2 and 3 generations ago, all companies experimented, new genres were born all the time, now there's almost a set you can fit ANYTHING into.  Also you must factor in the costs of developing games, no one would in their right mind make something completely out there and throw millions at it hoping it will sell well. 

It's a sad state of affairs, but maybe with the Wii catching Sony and MS off guard they'll try to make something new and different next gen, and try to make it affordable for developers to do what they do best, and they can afford to make something new and different a lot of that "soul" would return.