Djanjo's Opinion on Games and gaming of Today

[Kosheh]

what a weird topic...and first post o_O

it's very unusual, because unlike movies video games are rather niche if anything. even weirder - three companies have two completely different ideas about gaming which are starting to come together.

Back in the late 80's, you were probably a child and played videogames. A grown up at this time playing these games is unacceptable. As we grew, our games did too, and we saw an evolution in gaming - however, it should be noted that gaming didn't really make such incredible leaps and bounds as it did then as it does now - which leads me to my point but let me revisit the current one. NES -> SNES didn't bring a lot to the table in terms of gameplay since there was still very linear design concepts when it came to designing a game that sells. Better graphics? OK. Gameplay? Improved, due to better processors and cheaper save batteries. Creativity? Very rigid - cartridges could only fit so much data on them within a developer's production limits (buying X sized cart).
...which brings another interesting point - cart-based games are much more expensive to mass produce than a DVD-based game, so Nintendo had much harsher quality assurance and much MUCH fewer bad games slipped under the radar. The gaming industry was also pretty specialized and at the times very few people had the knowledge to develop and program for games. Smaller production teams as well.
I wanna say though

As consoles become more and more supportive of indie development, I have a feeling that this current "feeling" of mainstream gaming will slowly fade out of the world.

However, after "video game development" was what everyone wanted to do as a kid that's when gaming took a big decline. Too often, especially now there are enormous amounts of people who are eager to develop videogames and what education was formerly reserved to one college (Digipen) became information that could be learned in almost every college across the country. EVERYONE wanted to be a game designer but now the field is oversaturated. Console gaming companies took a hint from PC games and probably made the worst decision ever in gaming IMO - distribute games online. With that oversaturated field of employment means a lot of little indie studios working on games for WiiWare, PSN etc. but unfortunately on a lower budget and less user input we're getting games with lower QA control.
It's nice to have indie developers, but when your games are terrible due to corporate hounds on your case causing your overall product to suffer - that's indie development selling out.

With more corporate hounds on the butts of indie gaming, that means many companies have basically lowered their standards to turn money faster...and somehow, Nintendo's really at fault for this. Have you seen the available Wii titles at your local Gamestop?


Which brings me back to cart-based gaming - with electronic and disc-based means of game distribution the costs of doing so have lowered meaning QA isn't going to be as harsh. Why? Because those games that didn't pass QA before have one less thing to worry about when it's brought before Nintendo's QA board.

Worse off, Nintendo's really sold itself out thinking it's gonna go the way of Disney, being "all about games", going a little too out of its way to make games casual-friendly. Which...honestly, I'll admit it's nice but at the same time it's really annoying

I'd continue typing on but I feel like I've typed too much already and now I'm tired :/

basically
distribution media of games -> lately lower-quality games. there's a good amount of games that are an exception here. mostly PC games

bleh my two cents that's call