Words Of Wisdom said:
HappySqurriel said:
When it comes to a particular genre (or a particular subject) in books, movies, music or any creative medium popularity tends to act as a form of cancer; and the rapid, uncontrolled growth tends to kill off the original elements that the earliest fans tended to love. Often this is because the subversive and counter-culture nature of the content has to be taken out and the content has to be repackaged with a pretty bow to make it well suited for consumption by the masses. At times we’re all the masses and content is dumbed down to a level where it becomes suitable for us, and at other times we’re part of the subculture which is trampled for corporate gain.
In the long run there is nothing (really) wrong with this, and when the vampire-fad dies down and the masses move onto something else new content will be created by people who care about the source material again; and they will take the best ideas from the fad-era and toss out the rest.
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The Nintendo forum is back that way.
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A broad area (reading, watching movies, or playing videogames) seeing massive popularity is much different than a genre seeing popularity; primarily because the broad-based increase in popularity doesn't put pressure on any particular genre to change itself.
If you want to see the impact of Genre based popularity all you have to do is look at how the FPS genre has changed since everyone now wants to play it; there is almost no variation in the setting or enemies because the same 3 or 4 games are being copied by everyone, the difficulty has been scaled back with rechargeable shields and abundant ammo and health, and the single player campaigns are getting shorter and yet more repetitive because the games are (almost entirely) focused on the online-multiplayer component.
