| milkyjoe said: Someone else on another website said this better than anybody ever could. "We can complain that by making a console geared towards instant pick-up-and-play, unsophisticated gaming Nintendo have taken the gaming genre backwards, or at least hinder its progress. But what do we consider progress? There seems to be this idea that if we keep producing better iterations of physics systems, push graphics ever closer towards photo-realism, and write more involving stories, eventually there will be a tipping point and non-gamers will be convinced to...er....jump in. If only it were so. These casual gamers will always reduce the kind of games we play to childish rubbish because it involves - again in their eyes - boy's fantasies of speed and weaponry. While we reduce their idea of what games should be to childish rubbish because - in our eyes - they are simple, banal and don't carry any emotional attachment. Are we that arrogant to presume our view of their games carries more weight than their view of ours? Probably. "I was here first," we could say. But that, in itself, just sounds like another thing a child might say. " |
The funniest part about this is that most male casual gamers will jump right onto certain AAA games like MW2 without a second thought.
That's all well and good, but I'm not even talking about AAA titles. I'm talking about new innovations and IPs to come. When games like, say Red Steel 1 and 2 combined cannot reach the amount of sales of the casual games like Just Dance, then which direction do you think companies will push for? There's a concern for profit that exceeds worrying about the state of the industry.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there's some life in the Wii's third party. But this will become the trend soon enough within the other consoles too at this rate.
New IPs will catter to the casuals, and gamers will be stuck playing only sequels to the current AAA games, or these games will be made easier for the public. Maybe that's why I'm a bit bitter, as there are rumors of Socom 4 being toned down to appeal to a larger audience, making the game easier and more appealing for more people to play. While that's great for sales, it's killing the experience for gamers who've been with the series since the beginning. It's understandable that some gamers who've fit in that older age group feel a bit abandoned.
