You know CoD sucks. I hate it, I hate the gameplay, I hate the community, I hate how it makes Counterstrike look like bloody ArmA, I hate the fact that they limit it to 60 FOV now not just cause Xbox isnt as powerful as a PC but also because it narrows your view thus increasing the spammy gameplay, but... when all that is said and done, I understand it. You know that most people are idiots anyway with no taste. For every John Lennon, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix you get a million Bee Gees. Alright, I can live with that, cause I always roll my eyes and laugh and go find my niche that is so much better.
And while I've been able to do that with film, music, books, pretty much everything else, gaming has slowly been killing the niche. Why? I don't know. They just can't seem to get on board with a project anymore that breaks new ground, is polished to a high quality, and which appeals to more than just the face rolling 15 year olds who apparenlty can't even muster the brain power to play an even marginally challenging game.
So I said it, I understand why CoD exists, whatever, game on. But why do companies like Ubi take a niche game and try and turn it into a mainstream one? I don't understand. Its like pissing off all the Patriots fans cause you decided to replace them with an XFL team.
Sims are niche games. They appeal only to a very very small crowd. I don't get it why they look at the relatively poor sales and try and make it into something that it isn't. Its not like there's potential in this game. Does anybody really think in that boardroom that this online thing is going to make them a lot of money? I think its almost a reflex. They just naturally like someone with OCD tinker and bugger with everything to try and fit their little agenda. They have that vision and its usually completely out of touch with reality. How many great games get directives from publishers and when the reviews come pouring in they say its crap and needs patching?
I'm so pissed off. I'm so tired of it. I've been an avid gamer since the late 90s and I've watched the steady decline. I feel like Hunter Thompson sitting in a Vegas hotel room looking out over the desert seeing where that wave broke, wishing I was still there. Gaming used to be great. Now its just polluted by absurdly bad money grabbing.
I was playing the new Tribes game this week. Its also free to play. They gutted the core of that game. Made it so casual accessible. Another great game ruined by the need for "mass appeal".
I don't get it. Why can't they just have their niche market and their mainstream one? Why do they have to marginalize us? They know we're gonna hate it. But we're the ones that made Silent Hunter into a franchise that existed for 5 releases. How does that make sense?
Its baffling. But I think we're in a critical mass for gaming right now. Looking at how things are going Ubi and for EA they've been playing some strange games in their development. EA is really in trouble I think. Not real trouble but I can see some issues down the line for PC gaming. Bioware got bought by EA and now they stink. The Old Republic? Awful. Mass Effect 3? Well they keep saying 'don't finish it, disappointed'.
Its like, they've cracked the mainstream, now they don't know how to actually make it good. All the energy seems to go into making money, the schemes for collecting it. Why make a good game when you can make amediocre one that costs like 60 to 80 bucks in microtransactions for the average user to see it all and then decide it sucks?
I remember back in the day when a game that launched needing a patch just to be playable was a kind of sin. Like a laughing stock. Now, its business as usual. I've seen the high water mark. I saw the wave break. I'm going back to GWX and pretending this news never penetrated by cynical consciousness.
