The Decline of Video Games

I’m a real gamer.

You can call me, GamerGirlXD, or underscoreKittenSlayer underscore.

But my gamertag does not matter.

All that matters is that I’m a gamer withgamer knowledge and I want to talk about real gamer issues.

That is, bad video games.

We all, gamers, know the struggle of wantingto buy a game with limited time and money.

You want something of entertainment that isworth the price and doesn't feel like a complete waste of your time.

We have expectations for the thing we buy.

Like someone who goes to the cinema paid, to watch a good movie.

“I want him found.

Not tomorrow, not after breakfast, now.

” “Yes sir.

” If a movie comes out, made by a top directorsuch as.

.

.

Quentin Tarantino, you’d assume it willbe a very entertaining movie.

But you will never know for certain however untilyou have seen it.

And I can now say for one that this is a good movie, very good movie, you should see it.

“That's your son?” “No that's my stunt double Cliff Booth.

” That's an important difference we tend to forget.

.

.

Between packaging and content.

Like any wise man says, judge a book by itswords not its cover – and I think that applies to a lot of things but most importantly, videogames.

The packaging of a game is the way it is promoted.

Like a movie before it is released, you onlysee a glimpse of what you can expect, such as a trailer, or a beta gameplay.

The tip of the cherry cake.

*Amazing Cyberpunk 2077 trailer* Oh fuck yeah I'm excited.

YE It’s meant to draw attention without revealingtoo much of the underlying content.

This teaser causes expectations, like I wantthe rest of the cherry cake to taste at least as good as the tip.

Furthermore, packaging is the way a game ismade.

If it’s developed by a good quality companyor it's part of a successful franchise, it of course causes even higher expectations.

And that all eventually leads to a nice littlething called.

.

.

hype.

And hype is a fragile little thing, that canget crushed even faster than basically anything.

The content, of a game, is the part you actuallyget to play, it’s the result.

And if my cherry cake is advertised as a cherry cakeit should contain cherries or else I’m pissed.

See it as this.

Expectations, result.

You see a promising upcoming game, and getexcited for it.

You expect a good game, in the best case youget a good game.

If you didn't get excited for an upcoming title, you’ll either be pleasantly surprised when it turns out as a fine game, or just satisfiedwhen it turns out as a bad game because you didn’t get hyped for it anyway.

Now see, if you did get excited for an upcoming title, and it turns out that the result is utter crap, that’s not, that’s not nice.

That’s not great.

That's not gamer.

I was promised a cherry cake and got bamboozledwith an apple cake.

Surprisingly the last situation occurs moreoften than it used to.

Used to like, back in the day.

Back in the old good days of nothing but arcade.

When developers had to put effort in theirgames, otherwise no one would play them, it was that simple.

Games at that time were something of an experiment, something new, and if it didn’t work out well it would just- fade away.

Ergo the massive gaming crash of 1983 couldoccur.

The way that went down was something like- Dad.

Atari made a home console dad.

Yeah sure fun thing I don’t know what gamesis.

I don’t know either dad, but games, gamessound cool.

And now you can play them at home.

That’s great, so you don’t have to hangout with Jimmy at the arcade halls anymore? No fuck Jimmy Dad it’s christmas can I have my Atari twosix zero zero? Yeah sure sonny here it is and I bought italong a port of Pac-Man and a video game adaption of the popular movie, E.

T.

Oh thanks dad that’s great.

Dad.

Ye.

It’s not good.

Can we sell it? No.

If we didn’t have Nintendo we would neverhave games again.

That is a bold statement but with very muchtruth.

Nintendo was one of the only companies thatsurvived the crash, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Customers, weren’t, excited for games anymore.

So Nintendo did big brain time and put a massivecamouflage on their video game console, to make it an entertainment system.

It even came with a small little mascot, toconvince vendors that it was an “entertainment system” and totally not a video game console.

It was an extreme success.

Largely this success however was because Nintendounlike Atari made good games.

Whereas Atari believed it was enough to packagea game under a popular movie or game title to sell it, Nintendo had quality control.

Not only did they make sure their own gameswere absolutely, perfect for their time, they also made sure other companies didn’t selltrash on their system.

Nintendo awarded a so-called seal of quality onlyto third party games that they regarded as good games.

And customers regained trust in the videogaming industry.

This rebirth of video gaming of course sawthe rise of competitors.

Today besides Nintendo systems we have the Xbox, the PlayStation, .

.

.

the master race PC, and if you are really bored there is evensome shit you can play in your pocket, right anywhere.

And then you have companies like Ubisoft, Bethesda, Bandai, Take-Two, any company without a system or major platform, who still allmanage to stay on top of the gaming food chain.

You would think heavy competition by manylarge companies causes the quality of games to increase, by means of elimination of theweak, like if a company produces enough garbage they will eventually go bankrupt.

Sadly, that is not the case.

We have the internet.

Selling your trash has never been so easy.

You take, a YouTuber.

No, a popular, YouTuber.

Or a Twitch streamer, any of them it reallydoesn’t matter who.

Let them play your game.

Pay them, to hype their audience.

Stonks.

It’s that easy.

Before the internet as of today, let’s say, in the nineties, developers had to make sure their game was a hundred percent completeupon release in the stores.

You couldn’t release some unfinished gameand fix some patches- Make some patches to fix some issues becausethat technology didn’t exist yet, you would have to pull the game from the stores andbring it out again, and that would hardly be profitable.

Your game had to be good day one otherwisenoone would travel to the store for it.

Compare it to any modern online platform, and you’re asking where the fuck is my quality control.

Nowhere.

You can release anything on a platform likesteam and call it a game.

Even if it is unfinished, it doesn’t matter, people will play it.

It’s easy to buy.

Easy to refund.

When a market is relatively small such asthe Switch, developers have more time and money to invest in entertaining content, asthere is less pressure from competitors.

On the other hand in a larger market suchas mobile or PC, developers have a harder time attracting customers, because there areso many alternatives.

This means the developer spends more budget on packaging, to make sure people know the game exists andare willing to try it, before focusing on the content.

And indie developers who don’t have thebudget to promote themselves rarely take the risk of making a beautiful game that mightgo unnoticed, and in most cases instead make pure garbage.

And this should worry you, fellow gamer.

When there are so few good games, and mostof them become limited to a small group of people, what do you think happens to the overallquality of video games? I for one am not able to enjoy the exclusivemajesties of Breath of the Wild, God of War, or Borderlands 3 because I don’t own anaccount on the right systems or platforms.

To me, it quite seems like we are headingtowards an underwhelming future for video gaming.

Exclusives make our choices limited, likeshould you buy the Switch, the PlayStation, or invest in your PC? Large companies will only stick to the oldformula, the old franchises for as long as people still buy them.

And on the other hand, we, are the gamers.

Who are all simple gold panners in a river full ofendless disappointments.

Hoping to catch a shiny gem, every now andthen.

An indie or a triple A, it does not matter, as long as it's fun.

Now pray with me, for Cyberpunk.

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