The Glorious First Post

Since this is my first entry, it should be of a general nature, outlining my views on the current state of the video game industry, after reading this, you should be able to decide if you want to stick with this blog or disregard it as a ramblings of a mad man.

A lot of us ask the same questions - why are games becoming “not fun” or become “casualized”. Why do we see almost every single developer release DLC on Day 1? Why do we see lack of proper support and sense of community? Why are there almost no games with proper modding tools, and those franchises that used to release those tools are no longer doing so (i.e. the recent Crysis 2 release, completely ignoring the modding community that made the original Crysis so popular and fun). 

Quite a large portion of people will point towards consoles and how XBox Live and PSN are “ruining” the industry with the way they treat the developers/publishers. Probably, that same portion is going point towards the publishers that force the developers to release games that are not fully finished, ruining the potential of the game. 

However, the problem lies in the gamers themselves. And no, I am not talking about those gamers who have no concept of what is a good game or a true casual gamer (a working mom that has a Wii/XBox). I am talking about people who know what a good game should have, who know the quality and difficulty standards of video games in the past. Yet those people continue buying the unfinished products. I can take almost any recent release, just take the Call of Duty series. MW3 is coming right up and it is already #1 on the preorder list. A lot of people are tired of the series, a lot of people are tired of the rehashes and other crap thrown at us. But guess what? They still buy the product. How many people that were in “Boycott MW2” group eventually got the game and played it? A large majority. And the way gamers vote is not with their ramblings or rage on forums and various online communities but with their well-earned money. So if you gave a single cent for DLC or content that should have been in-game on Day 1 - congratulations, you are the reason this whole industry is in extremely bad shape now. 

There are still a few gems among the developers and there are also indie developers that follow the “old” business and development model. The most recent example would be CDProjekt - the $44.99 preorder contained so many goodies and promised continuous support, as well as free DLC. There are other examples, but they are not big, they do not grab the media attention to the same extent other over-hyped rehashes do. 

I guess the whole point of this post and blog is to get people to think about how they spend their money and on what. I am not saying you shouldn’t buy MW3 or other products that are below my standards, all I am saying is that the whole community of gamers needs to support those developers who do work by the “old” standards. Go ahead and buy some games from the developers who do it the right way. 

Posted in: First post,ramblings of a mad man.