5 Things That Are A Drag To The Gaming Industry

The gaming business is really thriving nowadays (some even saying that it is growing four times as fast as the U.S Economy), but if we take it from a research and development point of view, it has become stagnant in many ways and for a number of reasons. Today we are going to see 5 of those reasons why the video game industry is dragging its feet from a technological and innovative stand point. It is important to say that there are still good games and good business practices, but the bad ones you are going to see on this article are starting to become a real drag, so let's see.

1) Reckless technical advancements (this for that)
We all know that several game publishers are their own version of Mr.Crabs from Sponge bob, so they will do anything if it means them saving some money. Been things like this, it means that sometimes when a game gets the modern tech treatment it doesn't really improve, but changes priorities. For example one game that gets to have the most advanced graphics up to date, can become really short, have its content to be dumbed down or suffer from crippling bugs and glitches. All this because they so often focus on novelty trends and not on the aspects of what makes good game. It is a known fact that everything in a business runs within the so called "Iron Triangle", but if they can't bend the triangle, then they should at least make a stronger effort in order to maintain the quality of their products while working within its constraints.

2) Fan boys frozen in carbonite.
Let's get something out of the way first. Designers and developers do make mistakes and most of the time need a healthy dose of user feedback, but the ones we are talking about are not feedback providers but fan boys that loved one iteration of a game and will stay with it for all eternity, frozen in time. This type of fellow is the one that whenever a new iteration of their favorite game comes out, it doesn't matter how much their creators tried to bring new things and innovate, for them it is just awful and "lacks the excellency of the original". The games and communities that feature this kind of obsessed gamer will not be mentioned, but if you are one of them you will know and will probably be looking at the screen like this. Be aware that this isn't the same as wishing some game genres to return or stop changing for the sake of change, because the one we are talking about is more about specific games and not the whole spectrum.

3) The "a game per year" business.
The moment when companies decided to spawn some of their big franchise games on a yearly basis was the moment when quality started to go down. This is when some bad practices started to become the norm, with things like recycling the same resources year after year, making the games to be shorter and over-simplified and/or refusing to make new engines in order to make use of the latest technologies. All of these wrong doings need to stop and for that to happen we need to stop giving money to them in exchange for a half-done job. Feeding these yearly franchises not only sets gaming innovation back, but also gives an incentive to gaming companies to stop caring about new projects and concepts and stay hidden in their comfort zone. Luckily for us, sale numbers have shown that the success of franchises that are stuck in this business model is starting to go down, so it seems like the gaming community is waking up on this one.

4) The Imitation Game
Some gaming studios and companies (including some of those who used to be fan favorites) have just become trend machines and this is very unproductive. If there is something that gaming history has told us is that game market competition is done in showdown style which is 1 vs 1 and not a whole bunch of companies imitating each other and doing the same thing. It is either a showdown or a bunch of games with moderate success with no clear winner, so they should stop trying to mimic what they see as "trendy" because most of the time they won't get to be the underdog who wins it all in the end like in the Rocky movies. This has caused a lot of franchises to lose their focus and their identity in the company's effort to cash in on the success of others, even turning some legendary companies from trusted developer to the laughing stock of the gaming industry. Stick to your guns people, do what you do best and stop trying to be something you are not.

5) Treating games like normal household appliances.
The gaming market is a very complex one that has a lot of variables that need special attention before coming with a product strategy and most companies are ignoring this. Many of these are treating video games as if they were just another household appliance, with the same metrics and marketing strategies and this is awfully wrong. Selling a frying pan will never be the same as selling a console or game, but they are been treated as if they were the same thing because the higher ups in many of these companies don't know anything about games or they lack the passion that is needed to work with them.

A gamer is a very elaborate type of consumer, but these non-gamer business guys in high places seem to think that we are the same person that you would sell a frying pan to. Because of this, they feel like innovation and high quality doesn't have to be the norm because we will buy anything they throw at us. To be fair, the blame doesn't fall entirely on the business people as the gaming community is indeed feeding this practice by buying their products and falling for every one of their tricks (incomplete games, DLC that shouldn't be DLC, pay to win schemes, half baked ideas, limited content, etc). It is kind of hard to understand why so many gamers think this is acceptable as the industry itself takes a hit every time that a "frying pan" type of game has success. Stop giving them incentives for cutting corners!

Wrapping it up
Shifting resources instead of increasing them, fan boys that force developers to do the same thing over and over again, releasing a game per year even if it feels like a copy paste, companies imitating each other and treating a game as if it were something as simple as a frying pan. These things are part of what is making the video game industry to become a slow and procrastinating entity that doesn't improve itself very often because it feels like it doesn't need to. Part of the blame is on gaming companies with their shady schemes and the other part falls on gamers who accept these bad practices. Do we as gamers have to sacrifice so much in order for the industry to survive? The answer is no, so gaming companies should step up to their game and gamers who accept these kinds of blunders need to wake up soon.  

The Real Makings of A Bad Game

When we talk about a bad game we often mention some obvious things like bad controls, bad graphics and sound or even about broken game mechanics. It is a well known fact that judging a game can be something that is quite attached to your own taste for gaming, but there are some aspects that can be the definite tell tale signs of a poorly made game and today we are going to see some of them.

Sometimes it does feel like they did had a recycle key on their keyboard.

1) Excessive Recycling of resources
Let's start this one by stating that it is not possible to develop a game in which every thing is completely hand made and different and that is because of technical and financial reasons. The type of recycling that is considered bad and the one that gives the first sign that a game is not that good is when developers actually abuse of the material they use and have us gamers seen the same things over and over again. This includes different buildings with similar materials (in walls, floor, etc), repetitive characters/enemies (with a slight shameful change like color or name) flora and fauna on a game level (nobody wants to see countless patches of the same bush or animals repeated) and similar things like that. This type of recycling makes the game look generic, boring and uninspired. If they are going to recycle something they should at least not make it obvious.

Exceptions: Games that a growth based (mmorpg, online games) or puzzle games.  

Which one would you prefer?.

2) Generic Game Design
Game design is something that can be quite hard to do (a little harder than just scribbling a stage layout on a piece of paper), but if a game is announced and advertised as a AAA experience, it should NOT have a design that looks and feels generic in nature. Examples of this include the "corridors and small rooms" design in some first person shooters, redundant game content that has the player doing the same thing several times with no clear objective, story lines that are separated into pointless sequences and game material that is so simplistic that it becomes insulting to our intelligence. These kind of crappy design faults reflect very deep faults in the development process of the game like designers been forced to make dumbed down versions of otherwise good ideas, the team rushing the game to meet an unfair deadline or just plain laziness by everybody involved.

Exceptions: Dungeon crawler rpg games, growth based games, sandbox games

Final Fantasy VII is an example of a GOOD linear game. The place in this picture is Fort Condor and
it didn't have anything to do with the main storyline, but it was awesome and it showed how
a linear game can be fun when done well. 

3) Bad Linearity
This one was briefly referenced in the previous bad game characteristic, but it is in within itself a very bad thing on many levels. Nowadays there seems to be a war against linear games, but what most people are not realizing is that linearity itself is not bad. The really bad thing is linearity gone bad and that is a whole other concept that should not be generalized. Back in the 90's and before the advent of "open worlds" in gaming, most games were linear in nature and up to this day we have some legendary titles that are still considered to be masterpieces. Those games were a good kind of linear experience that was so well designed that it did not felt linear at all. On the other hand, there are AAA games that feel as if they were designed by an poor amateur at best. We have scenarios in which the players find themselves going from point A to point B without doing anything significant other than getting to the next cutscene or game worlds that try to lie to us gamers by trying to look big and well made while the sad truth is that we are running through the same stuff without any purpose at all. Bad linearity is not acceptable and gamers should make notice of this and let it be known, half baked ideas will not be tolerated.

Exceptions: Games with randomly generated material.

Wrapping it up
Basically, the bottom line is that a bad game is not necessarily bad because of technical aspects. A bad game is one that becomes boring because we are doing stuff that is not fun and we are doing it for no significant reason. Some games can get away with this because they are addicting and we don't mind grinding for hours just to get what we want, but the moment we feel like we are are just pressing buttons for nothing is the moment when our attentiveness towards the game begins to shrink and sooner than later we will find ourselves playing something else. Mediocrity in games is something that should never be accepted and it is up to us to stop it where ever it appears, let's just vote with our wallets and make sure that game companies get the idea.