The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:  Trends of 2009 Pt. 1

By Brady Fiechter

Play Magazine Editor in Chief

Play Magazine Volume Eight:  Issue 4 pgs. 18-19.

A little something good...

Indie = true rock stars

Some of the best games last year came from the indie scene, and there's no indication 2009 will be any less productive.  Smaller teams and smaller games have a unity of vision that is distinctly appealing.  More risks and gutsier ideas will surely mark the download space as more gamers get signed up to throw their purchasing power into the ring.  And if you've been around the gaming block from the beginning, getting worked up for, say, the next Strider release goes well beyond nostalgic pull.  These classic revivals are a return to simpler game structures, quicker play times, lovely 2D presentations and a host of other appealing qualities that are often lost in the big-budget titles slowly homogenizing the industry.  My expectations are high -- maybe a bit unrealistically high -- for the indie space this year.  Perhaps the best part of the process:  nearly every release is a wholly original work.

Friendship

When you get to a certain age, it's tough to orchestrate a gaming session live with a friend.  Kids and spouses and responsibilities and the hectic urban lifestyle be damned!  But with online co-op, finding a friend to play comes down to a spotaneous phone call and a simple click on the title screen.  I love it.  Maybe co-op breaks the flow of some experiences, but the upside is the raucous fun of a buddy along for the ride.  This year will showcase an unprecedented number of games that offer the two-player experience over the Interwebs, and developers will start getting more creative with the integration of teamwork into their worlds.

Don't fear the short

Games are going to get gradually shorter; gamers will gradually start to accept more streamlined experiences in exchange for more satisfying feature sets and smarter, more efficient design decisions.  There are plenty of us who don't want to slog through a 12-hour game; there are plenty of us who don't have the time and will demand with a louder voice more adult-centric experiences.

Speaking of Adults

Developers are growing up.  Games are slowly, rightly growing up.  This year, games like Heavy Rain will endeavor to show how important it is to step out of the kiddy pool and into deeper waters.  Bioshock 2 is a most anticipated game of the year, if singularly for the fact that early indications show a pensive high-brow affair that games don't often reach for.  With nudity and more aggressive depictions of violence often marking the "A" in Adult these days, the real test for growth will come when emotionally dense games light up the market.

A little something not so good...

Pacing matters, and plenty don't get it.  What passed before no longer passes; many gamers don't even finish most games.  Genre obviously dictates the track, but still -- most don't get it.  There remains this insistence that more enemies means more enjoyment, that more moments of action means proper engagement, that dialing up wave after wave of resistance is somehow the key to fun.  Nope.  Downtime is so important, contrast is so important, yet we often get none of that.  A cut scene is not a break in the action; it breaks the game.

Listen to George Lucas

Sound design has always been one of the weakest links in the game development chain.  Even top-grade games like Gears of War 2 struggle to use a dense soundscape to enhance the experience, and there's no reason to believe things are gonna change any time soon.  This isn't a topic that gets much discussion, but when you experience a game like Tomb Raider Underworld or Dead Space, you see just how important great sound design is.  And yet most games treat the process as an afterthought -- at least a budget afterthought.  Rare is the game that comes even close to film-quality sound design.

Dead on Arrival

Voice acting continues its amateur hour.  It just doesn't need to be this way; great voice is cheap.  Good direction is talent, not money.  There are plenty of actors that would work on the cheap simply to have the work.  To be fair, the dialogue most have to work with is routinely poor, so who's to blame for lack of inspiration?

A scary story

Its getting old deriding storytelling in games, but things have to change, and they will.  Eventually.  So much time and effort and talent goes into constructing these awesome worlds; who has time to tell spin a compelling yarn.  Add to the clunky dialogue the new love of saying "f**k" in every sentence, more reliance on cut scenes to deliver the empty lines, and you've got more tin in the ear of game stories.  The idea of plot doesn't even exist right now in games.

Squads

Squads.  Whatever happened to games of solitary action, where you are empowered as the hero?  The AI always reveals confusion, pulling me out of the experience.  The constant chatter is inane and distracting and unbelievable.  The shooter sort of invented it, so now we must hack and steal bad ideas simply because bad ideas sold millions?  I'm being harsh here; the squad mentality is simply anemic and underdeveloped right now.  The idea will work magic someday...