My father is a car enthusiast, but he has an unusual take on the pastime. Most grease monkeys look back to the past for the glory days, but he doesn’t. “Cars are better now than they ever have been,” he would always insist, citing their expanding functionality, reliability, and aesthetic beauty (he could elaborate more intelligently than I).
I think this is the way I feel about video games. I love the Super NES as much as the next guy, but I don’t lament the times gone by and yearn to return to 16 bit graphics. HD gaming with 5.1 sound, immersive graphics, online multiplayer, and diverging story paths kicks the crap out of “Space Invaders.” No offense.
Still, as our art form reaches a zenith of technological horsepower, profitability, and mass audience awareness, the industry has picked up a few bad habits. I’m not asking for a full-on retreat to the Sega Genesis, but perhaps there are things we should be learning from our ancestors as we move forward. Perhaps the most troubling example concerns sequels.
I miss how sequels used to be. New installments were quantum leaps from their progenitors, with aspirations the originals could never have imagined. The graphics went up, the game play expanded, even the presentation became sexier, more refined. For this reason, sequels in our world are completely the opposite of sequels in movies: we look forward to them.
Lately, though, that ferocious quest for perfection has had its edge taken off. Sequels now are almost alarmingly same-y, sometimes covering almost identical ground. As a perfect test case, consider the leap between the original “Super Smash Bros” and its sequel. Pretty significant, right? Now look at the jump between that and the latest one, “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” The gap is shrinking rapidly.
“Bioshock 2” is the most infamous example, a game with an almost embarrassing lack of imagination, its uselessness made all the more potent by the announcement of “Bioshock: Infinite.” “Halo 3: ODST” made unpopular, superficial changes and threw itself on an unsuspecting public. And let’s be honest, Treyarch has made good money standing on Infinity Ward’s shoulders with “Call of Duty: World at War” and “Black Ops.”
Even looking past the obvious punching bags, this is a problem. “Super Mario Galaxy 2” is an amazing game, and I’m not denying that, but in the old days throwing Yoshi in would only qualify you as an expansion pack. “Fallout: New Vegas” is an incredible experience, but I’m not sure tossing in iron sights and a town-reputation system justifies sixty greenbacks. Even “Starcraft 2” plays it remarkably safe considering how much time had passed since the original.
The reason for this is obvious: games cost too much to make these days. To justify the kind of expense that pours into video game development, you’ve got to keep drawing from the well once you hit water. Building new engines, or even significantly overhauling old ones, is financially exhausting. Besides, there’s years of good will stored up under the name, and eventually the guys writing the checks figured out that some IPs put out no matter what you do with them. Standing there in Gamestop, I KNEW I wasn’t going to like “ODST,” but I bought it anyway.
What we’re seeing emerge in this industry is a new business model, one that aims to keep costs down while continuing the skyrocketing profit margins. So far, it has worked marvelously. Each new “Call of Duty” was successively cheaper to make, and yet its sales figures have risen exponentially. It’s a banker’s wet dream. With America in a recession and most of the entertainment industry on the defensive from piracy and reduced expendable income, this kind of strategy just makes too much sense to ignore.
Unless we don’t play along.
I have faith in gamers. We are a lot of things, many of them negative, but one thing I would never accuse us of is not paying attention. Eventually we’re going to snap out of these mindless stampedes and ask ourselves just what the hell this retail price tag is actually buying us. If we stop playing nice with this strategy, if we force developers to earn out attention by dazzling us instead of lazily waving familiar brands just out of arm’s reach, then what they’re doing won’t work anymore.
