Power-Off
an alternative look at gaming

Innovation must die

There was one thing that I noticed more than anything on my visit to Skegness - No, it wasn't the amount of old people there is there, or the low, low prices in the arcades. In Skegness, or Ingoldmells to be more precise, everything screams conformity. In the market every stall is near enough the same but with a different owner who seems to think that he can sell Tamagotchi's for a fiver, the arcades all have near enough the same machines and, more so than my other remarks, any teenager within a five mile radius of that god forsaken town MUST own one of the 'Real Tommy Burberry hats' that Europe's largest outdoor market has to offer. And I laughed every time I passed one of those mindless sheep.

The situation in Ingoldmells isn't much different to what we've got in the gaming industry. Think about it - the market stall could be an assortment of gaming companies offering to seduce you with the same games as everyone else games, only with different hype and a new 'dynamic air-time model', those mindless Burberry wearing drones could be the Burberry wearing drones that walk into GAME on a Saturday afternoon and the Burberry hats could easily symbolise the latest action game that boasts about the number of red pixels it can have on screen per frame. It's a subject that's been hashed, rehashed, reprocessed and rehashed again, all to no avail.

Time and time again the industry ignores the pleas of the hardcore gamer and denies the opportunities to create innovative, playable and, above all else, different games in favour of re-releasing last year big hit. Games haven't progressed in the last 5 years and the industry has sold out. Anyone who buys a licensed game is just a pawn in these games developers manipulative game of chess. Well, at least that's you could get told if you asked one of the 'hardcore' gamers, along with a few Japanese game references and possibly a mention of the neo-geo, just to spice thing up. In my opinion, the market IS saturated with old, boring, copy-and-paste sports titles, just like it has been for as long as I can care to remember, but it is saturated for a reason - these licenses and updates sell well. Fifa, James Bond and near enough any other EA game would tell you that. The market is filled with the casual gamer who only want a quick game when they've come home from the pub, the type that don't want risks with their gaming.

And over the last few months I've noticed quite a few developers taking creative risks with their games, most notably Capcom with their 5 games for Nintendo Gamecube. Viewtiful Joe has shown anybody who's cared to cast an eye over it, with it's apparently old school style Gameplay mixed with cartoon graphics. It sounds like what the industry has been crying out for for years. It's innovative, it's different, it's crazy and it's had poor sales in Japan, and I doubt that they'll much be improved on western shores. It's happened before with titles like Doshin the Giant and it'll happen again (probably with a Gamecube title as well) - innovative titles don't sell well.

The thing is that the 'hardcore' are no long the majority of gamers and the casual have taken over. A new game won't sell half as much as 'BLUD 'N' GUNZ 2!' because there are more people that'd rather kill than pretend to be a mosquito. Let's stop moaning and just accept the 'hardcore' gamers reign at the top of the gaming industry has ended, and the 'casual' rule the roost.