Sage: Stagnation of Gaming - I disagree

First off, ladies and younger ladies, please watch, if you haven't, the well-written Word of Wisdom episode released by my good fellow Bennett The Sage:

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Sage man, I sincerely think you're only getting this impression of stagnation because of the fact that we have so much information these days that's it's very easy to keep track of every game released each week... and also that now, as an adult you can consider video gaming as a whole, including the market it represents...

But franckly, remember these "good ol' days"...

How many side-scrollers did you play on the NES ?

How many Street Fighter clones did you play on the SNES ?

How many Doom-like FPS's did you play after 1992 ?

How many survival horror games emerged after Alone in the Dark/Resident Evil ?

How many puzzle gamse flooded the market after Tetris ?

How many generic 3D fighting games did you play during the 32/64-bit era ?

How many games are directly emulating Mario 64 or simply exist because of Mario 64 ?

How many Dungeon Crawlers on DOS ?

How many Point & Click games made by both Sierra and LucasArt between 85 and 95 ?

How many racing games tried to tackle Gran Turismo's haegemonia ?

How many Shadow of the Beast rip-offs on Amiga/Atari ST ?

How many games bet on digitized graphics after Mortal Kombat ?

How many FMV games flooded the CD-Rom market after the 7th Guest ?

Heck, HOW MANY SPACE INVADERS CLONES ARE THERE ON ATARI 2600 ?

So JUST SAYING, that it is true that right now all shooters feel like Call of Duty, all Beat'em up's feel like God Of War and we can't keep track of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band sequels...

but it's just a PHASE , that's what's popular right now, yet there are still a lot of original games coming out these days, with fresh ideas, concept or just art direction... and soon you'll see new trends emerge and dozens of clones will arrive... it's ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE !

(same for the "revolutionary peripherals")

So I'd say ENJOY the seemingly endless wave of shooters while it lasts, you might miss them someday... except for Turning Point though :)

PS: I guessed Sniper Ghost Warriors ;)

ATTENTION READER: this is not a personnal attack or some attempt to start any sort for flame-war, I got nothing against Bennett or anything so don't get carried away with B.S. drama or whatever...

Comments

[Serg]

YES! EXACTLY! enjoy all of this while you can!

When I was young my family was part of a religion that didn't let me play or see any kind of violent game or movie, the result? after I left the religion, now I'm still STARVING for violent and
over the top movies like Dead Alive and Evil Dead, and I just can't play enough games of the genre that was once called "Doom clones", and it's really sad that I didn't enjoy those games at the
time because now it's from really hard to impossible to be able to play deathmach games on my favorites like Duke Nukem 3D.

And more importantly, I missed completely the opportunity to talk to my few gamer friends about these games, sharing strategies, secrets recomending user maps and our opinion on whether Doom is
better than Duke and whatnot, right now they couldn't care less about these games, and I know that there are still really strong communities in the internet for those games, but it's simply not the
same that talking to real life friends, class mates and coworkers while is the topic of the moment, and at the fear of sounding overly dramatic, I will always feel that missed opportunity as a void
in my childhood and teenage years.

And that's what going to happen too to games like Halo and Modern Warfare, I even think we are seeing it happening right now on games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band at least with the people I know,
they are growing tired fast of these games.

[Kleiner Kokiri]

I wanted to watch this video before but ... after i saw what it is about i just skipped it. Sorry sage ... but that's too ridiculous. It's elitist, nostalgic, lamentation and nothing more.

This is the biggest time of innovation ever. And there is stuff for EVERY taste in this big world. Do you like the Super Mario World Engine ? Go to my beloved talkhaus or smwcentral and you'll find
hundreds of good SMW-Hacks. Quality hacks, even better than the original game. Like indie games ? Doujin titles ? There was never a better time to play or release such games thanks the
internet.

Hentai Games ? I don't remember having such titles like rapelay back on the old SNES console ... boy oh boy. Reason is:
The new area of PC games is free from the bonds of prude Console-Companys. Yes, companys like "Nintendo" that even censored Super Mario Kart in america and europe. Oh, yeah ... good old times.

Why does every game have to look unique ? Even that, doesn't make sense to me. The video game market has grown bigger and bigger ~ if you want unique-looking games you just have to open your eyes.
Is recettear not unique enough ? Okami, Ico, Shadow of Collosus, the Nintendo Wii-Controller ? FPS-Shooters are the worst (or maybe from your position best) example, because a lot of them use
similiar graphic engines. I agree that the wave of WW-Shooters is gigantic... but if people buy them it's their own choice (and not "fault"); maybe they doesn't care about originality. Because if
you want originality ~ there always is some. Just somewhere else, i mean.
If you hate Bioshock 2 just because it looks similiar and it's a sequel. Don't play it. Buy Kirby's epic Yarn.

On top of all that ... digital data games never vanishes. If a game or movie is created, you may buy it even after 20 years. So, every creative/unique looking game out there remains in this world
and can be found waiting to be played by new people. How can you complain about rereleasing such games ?

But okay ... a little bit constructive criticism shall be made:
A few years ago i played the PS2-game Drag on Dragoon (aka Drakengard in Europe). The gameplay wasn't THAT good, it was a mere hack and slay game. However ... the story was very well-made and the
characters original.
Most of it was subtle but we had: A protagonist that had an incestous relationship to his sacrified sister, a homosexual pedophile, twins from which the female one was sexually abused by her
parents and obducted (while the male twin wanted to bring her back and cared for her) and a lunatic cannibalistic former mother that kills and eat children ~ and ironically gets eaten in the end by
gigantic embryos.
^
Of course this game was strongly censored in the western version. It was a a big hit in Japan though.
Im mentioning this BECAUSE characters like that are still a major taboo in the west, thus preventing originality in RPGs. And our american friends are a little bit at fault here.

Anyways, like benzaie said, there is a lot of copying going on. But that doesn't mean there is no originality in new titles anymore. The kinect may be a clone of the Wiimote, but the Wiimote was
still an innovation, right ?
Man ... just buy Kirbys Epic Yarn.

And whom am i talking too ? It's not like you'll read this.