Are we in a 'Dark Age of Gaming'?

I've been doing some thinking, and it seems to me that the current state of the game industry is roughly analogous to The Dark Age Of Comic Books: a deconstructive masterwork (Watchmen, the first Modern Warfare) which most other games try to emulate (the '90s Anti-Hero trope, Spunkgargleweewee) to the point of corrupting previously good franchises (post-Crisis DCU, the current state of Battlefield and Medal of Honor) and the very strong possibility that the industry is heading for a crash.

I think there is a way out of this, both content-wise and economically. Economically, the industry will naturally recover. Video games are here to stay. In terms of content, if COD 4 was the Watchmen of gaming, then perhaps it's time someone made the Kingdom Come of gaming. A game that explicitly rejects the need for violence and returns to the spirit of classic adventure games: solving problems through guile and intelligence rather than shooting them.

The Seventh Generation is really dark, yes.

But in truth, we've been sliding closer and closer there since the Sixteen Bit Era. Mortal Kombat 1 was one of the first big strides, and everything rolled on from there.

But as for getting out of this "dark age", good luck with that. As long as studios make those games, and the gaming public eats it like candy, we'll still be here for a while.

Yes to everything.

I think that's stretching things to ridiculous levels. And not quite getting what's meant by "Dark". Mortal Kombat's existence showed how diverse the industry was getting more than anything else; it was a good sign. Even if it was an immature gorefest, it still represented how homogenization was very much not a problem the industry faced at that point.

Sure, sometimes one Belt-Scroll, platformer, JRPG or Shoot'Em'Up could be difficult to tell from the next... But we still had Belt-Scrolls, Platformers, JRPGS and Shoot'Em'Ups. Nobody was trying to be all four at once.

I didn't realize what y'all meant about Dark . . .

There are a lot of games that aren't dark, but I agree we're sliding into a grim time in gaming content. Well, keep sliding into grimmer times.

I'd say its not really a dark age in the sense of the dark age of comicbooks and more in the sense that creativity has been taken to a corner and shot in the head. Companies are so risk averse that they try to make everything hit on an entire checklist of items and end up releasing hollow mishmashes of games.

Its not that we need to reject violence in games.

We need to reject creatively sterile focus tested game design

edited 11th Aug '13 11:57:19 AM by midgetsnowman

That's my general perception of the dark age of comics- everyone was trying to be Watchmen, but most of them only got the superficial aspects.

This

edited 11th Aug '13 11:57:31 AM by Thorn14

well, thats my point though. i dont think rejecting violence will fix it. And I'd argue the dark age of comics never really left, because even nowadays, the comic industry is in a slow decline of trying to ape any halfway high selluing idea until it dies.

Take for example, ff14. a Game I'm highly excited about.

Does it borrow a lot from games like warcraft? Sure. But the fact its unafraid to use ideas like a job system that makes excess characters pointless, or have a heavy focus on narrative is something Korean MM Os that are basically fancy front ends for a cash shop wouldnt dare do.

edited 11th Aug '13 12:00:35 PM by midgetsnowman

Well, something highly publicised that isn't a bland FPS. The big publishers often argue that 'only shooters sell' but how the ever-loving fuck would they know? Have any of the big publishers ever tried to market, say, an adventure game? Then how would they know it won't sell?

edited 11th Aug '13 12:01:47 PM by optimusjamie

Its the same reason "women dont sell as lead chasracters"

because they never get pushed and given decent games to helm

The fact that 'unconventional' games that wouldn't have been picked up by publishers have gained so much success on Kickstarter just proves that the publishers are out of touch with what customers actually want.

Actually, now that I think about it, 'Dark Age of Gaming' doesn't necessarily refer to a situation like the dark age of comic books, but in a state where 'mainstream' games have become largely homogenised- and with the increasingly overblown budgets of so-called 'triple-A' games and the unrealistic expectations placed on them, could probably be more accurately compared to the Fall Of The Studio System.

edited 11th Aug '13 12:17:29 PM by optimusjamie

I think they think its not that unconventional ideas can't sell persay but they can't make the massive multi million "Next Co D" sales they stupidly want.

I tend to think part of it comes down to mainstream criticism of games, too.

Say, a game comes out. It's a good game, an enjoyable one. It has a few novel ideas and executes them in an average way. But the game critics don't like the implementation of ideas, or they find some other bad things about the game, and downrate it accordingly.

Due to its lower ratings, it doesn't sell very well.

Publisher and developer are therefore led to believe new idea was a failure and go back to what has succeeded for them in the past.

Then another Co D 4 clone comes out. It has a much higher marketing budget because there's less risk involved. They buy all the ads on IGN and Gamespot and what have you. Game critics are compelled by $$$ and fanboys alike to give it a good rating.

Good ratings equal good sales.

It's a vicious cycle.

I'm sorry, we live in the age of Arkham City, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted. "Only shooters sell" is blatantly false, although I will concede that the games I mentioned are not exactly pillars of creativity either. They're at least not functionally identical first-person shooters.

Nah, gaming is only getting better. A lot more variety these days than back then.

Well a problem seems to be that with so many games being developed with such overblown budgets year after year publishers are now finding themselves disappointed that their games haven't sold well enough even when they have sold a few million copies. For example, Resident Evil 6 has sold near 5 million copies worldwide yet this was not enough to satisfy Capcom. No idea what RE 6's budget was, but it was probably right up there and maybe the game barely made a profit. I'm no expert on economics but surely it is not sustainable for games to be selling in their millions but not selling well enough to make up for their budget. All this seems to lead to is more focus testing and a greater aversion to risks by many big studios. This isn't a problem only affecting the game industry mind.

edited 11th Aug '13 12:52:24 PM by PiccoloNo92

I'd also like to point out that the seventh generation gave rise to massive amounts of indie developers, or at least gave them access to the much wider audience that consoles provide.

This video pretty much sums up the AAA gaming industry these days.

I think "creativity" in games has always been fairly low. Throughout The History Of Video Games the dominating genre was always the one that sold the most and the one that compelled others to follow. I'll list by generation.

• The Golden Age Of Video Games: 2D shmups.
• Eight Bit Era: 2D platformers
• Sixteen Bit Era: 2D platformers, 2D fighting games for a time.
• Fifth Generation: 3D platformers, JRPGS for a time.
• Seventh Generation: FPS, with WRPGs at a solid second.

The only generation I feel didn't have a dominating genre was the Sixth Generation, which is noted on its page.

The only thing truly entering a Dark Age of Gaming is the PC arena. Given that Windows 8 effectively killed the PC as a viable technology for mass consumption (seriously, PC sales have suffered a horrific decline in the past year), the onus goes to consoles which have free reign.

Given the rise of indie games and things like Kickstarter we're seeing a lot more variety than ever before, you just gotta know where to look.

For instance, would Touhou be around today if the indie market weren't encouraged? By publisher standards it wouldn't see the light of day since it doesn't make much money for ZUN. However it is a cultural phenomenon in Japan and has a surprisingly massive fanbase worldwide even going to places you'd never expect Touhou to reach such as Finland.

edited 11th Aug '13 1:51:20 PM by MajorTom

Nah. The incidence of FPS on the industry is overrated. Tons of excellent, varied games come out every year. Yes, militray first-person shooters tend to be popular. But there's still a lot of excellent games out there, and not exactly obscure. Maybe the industry will crash, but I don't see it.

Even the other genres are starting to feel samey though. Every TPS is basically a cover shooter now. More and more beat em ups are also taking Arkham's combat system.

It just feels like we are following a massive case of Follow the Leader

Stealth games are becoming less about stealth as well (Have you seen the new Thief? Dreadful!)

And true horror games are all but dead outside of the indie scene.

@Waxing Name; There's a little more to it then that.

The FPS's dominance in the generation goes beyond it just being the most popular genre. The keyword is "Homogenization". That doesn't mean everything's becoming an FPS. It means everything's becoming more like an FPS. Or Call Of Duty more specifically.

Dead Space went from a horror game where you happen to shoot things into a straight up shooting game. Uncharted was mentioned a few posts ago as something that stands out despite having the exact same shooting mechanics as Gears Of War. They're still not FPS games, but they're still getting close to one another instead of branching out and forging a niche for themselves.

But I think the be-all end-all of all this is Halo 4 ending with a quicktime event. The quicktime end "Boss" of Modern Warfare 2 was praised because it worked. You can't exactly have an end boss in a Modern Warfare game without shifting the mechanics around a bit. But Halo 4 had a central villain with a unique appearance and strange powers. It had gameplay mechanics that lend themselves very well to a fully playable climactic encounter. And we never get to fight him in the confines of the gameplay despite how much sense it would make because no game in recent memory had a grand finale endboss and sold gangbusters.

Despite how epic and satisfactory playing that segment would have been, all we do is press three buttons. Despite that sequence being set up as something that would be memorable and unique, all we do is press three buttons. Despite being something that could DEFINE that game in a sequence that is completely unique to itself, all we do is press three buttons.

The game went out of its way to avoid something that could be used to create an identity for itself just so they could do what was happening in a game that sold better.

And that's what the industry is doing all over the place. In tiny little ways. And we're all hurting for it.

edited 11th Aug '13 2:32:47 PM by ShirowShirow

I blame the focus on cinematic gaming making everything feel homogenized. Everything is linear so the devs can tell their "story" (Again, Thief wont let you jump or use rope arrows unless the game lets you, and its filled with a bunch of cinematic scenes where you just run forward) that we hardly feel like we are playing games anymore.