How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

[Bodhesatva]

areseris said:

Avinash_Tyagi said:

MontanaHatchet said:
The problem is that there have always been games for all demographics, where's the evidence that the videogame market would have crashed under "the old ways"?

There may have been games for all demographics(doubtful, but for the sake of argument), but controls were a barrier to entry, most would look at a controller and become intimidated, but with Wii that is not an issue, even elderly folks who never played games are having fun

Why exactly do you want videogames to go mainstream? That would be a horrible, horrible thing imo. Everything that goes mainstream tends to turn into crap. Why do you want dumbed down games for the masses?

If that were to happen, then I would give up consoles and just stick to the PC.

It's bad enough that the movie&music industries produces mostly crap (and you have to really search for quality art), now we want to ruin videogames too?

Let developers create the games they actually want to... not the ones that sell to the masses just so the producers can make some coin (EA).

Can you imagin how bad videogames would be if we had 30 Michael Bay types for every 1 Martin Scorcese?

Let the videogame industry concentrate on pleasing it's core customer and let the industry grow slowly. Why must we be recognized by the masses at all?

 

I just want to point out how idiotic it is to compare the mass market games to Michael Bay flicks, and the "hardcore" games to Martin Scorsese ones (yes, you spelled his name wrong, which is rather funny, considereing your implicit suggestion that you are more sophisticated than hoi polloi).

It's the "hardcore" gamers that are bankrupting the gaming companies demanding high end graphics, tons of guns and and tons of action.

It's the casual gamers that don't care about visuals and aren't particularly concerned with action or explosions.

I would contend that nothing in the gaming industry is akin to Scorsese yet, but when talking about Michael Bay, your mega budget, action packed Halo and Metal Gear are much more similar to Michael Bay flicks than simple, low budget, low action games like Wii Play or Brain Age.

In short, the problem with your analogy is that both Metal Gear and Wii Play are infantile. Therefore, your claim of some sort of intellectual superiority or sophistication is invalid.

My overall stance: you'd rather get games that cater exclusively and only to you than to see the video game industry grow. I think that's quite selfish, but you're certainly entitled to be selfish.