Although many might not assume so by my snobbish veneer, I am an avid fan of video games.
Ever since my first encounter with Street Fighter on the Sega Genesis, I absolutely fell in love with the idea of immersing myself in a world that holds truly endless artistic possibilities.
Although literature, poetry, language and music are all dearer to me, what I once loved about video games was that they had something those other media did
not: honesty.
Sure, most might not look at the original Pong as a profoundly honest, ground-breaking piece of artistic brilliance, but one thing is for sure: it wasn’t beholden to silly labels like “avant-gardist” and trends of profiteering that now have their money-grubbing hands firmly about the throat of the entire gaming industry.
It wasn’t always like this. Games that had real artistic value and elevated the art form through satire, witticism, allusion and some incredibly good writing once had their place in the gilded halls of gaming history.
But sadly, with the advent of Xbox live and the PlayStation network, that slowly but surely began to change.
Online games changed the playing field completely and the more popular they became, the more money and promotion went
into them.
And, as so often happens, all that money and promotion came at the expense of good storytelling and aesthetic accents such as humor and character depth. And of course I enjoyed them as well, initially; we all did.
Back in my heyday, I failed a class in high school because all I enjoyed was playing the latest Gears of War and Call of Duty games.
But as I got older and my other interests started to manifest themselves, I began to feel that there was something missing to the medium I had loved all
my life.
Where was the awe-inspiring storytelling that had existed in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? Where was the incredible symbolism and poetry that had made Deadly Premonition such a cult hit?
What ever happened to the days when developers would actually innovate instead of lazily churning out safe, formulaic rehashes of the Halo, Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed franchises?
Maybe I’ve just become the kind of grumpy, disgruntled vanguard gamer that is more at home behind the counter of a classic games novelty shop than in this brave new world of bland and unimaginative games, but I’d wager there are many gamers, young and old, who feel this way as well.
The ability to create visually gorgeous games has never been more readily available, so in theory, games should be as good as they’ve ever been, but they’re not.
Alas, my once greatest pastime has been hijacked by corporate executives who, instead of developing games that challenge the emotions and test the moral fiber of the player, pander to the lowest common denominator of artistically-illiterate troglodytes who want a game with a lot of nudity, vulgarity and blood that they can play with their buddies for a few hours here and there, then abandon forever.
Perhaps it was inevitable once it became so profitable that gaming would come to put money above substance, but I hope that the trend changes.
Indie game developers are still creating good art and, to survive as a medium, all gamers should support them with their coin, otherwise they will be overtaken and bought out by the cold, unfeeling leviathan of cutthroat capitalism.
I hope one day soon I won’t have to go dusting off an old disc to play a good game, but that I’ll instead be able to go buy a new one, just like before.
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