Fear's Take on Gaming Trends

Fear’s Take on Gaming Trends

 

                I wanted to write this to take time and voice my opinion on some of the trends that the gaming industry have had for years, and some that are just starting to pop up over the last few years. Now these are just my opinions, I have no backup data to support anything rather I have a positive outlook or negative one. Feel free to comment and argue or support. So here we go!

 

                1) Time Base Exclusives – I’ll start right off with one that I have some of the strongest negative opinions of. Really this all come down to what really sells a game; Hype. When you release a game on one system, this generation Xbox One has had most of these, then wait a year for it to release it on the PS4, you lose the hype. I’ll use Rise of the Tomb Raider as an example for this. The game is amazing, easily one of the best I’ve played in the last few years, but I only own a PS4. What this means for me, is when it released in 2016 the hype was decent, but since I couldn’t play it, it didn’t really hype me up. A year later, and of course Uncharted 4 released in that time, I wasn’t nearly as hyped as I would have been a year earlier. Here’s the thing; I personally loved it, even to the point of saying I think it edgesout Uncharted 4 as the better game. The brand sold me on picking it up, but there was no big hype to play it. I’ve noticed that with single player games, they have a few months to really sell people once they launch. There is the mix of pre-launch hype, then word of mouth that drive the sales. But when a game is held off for a year from a group of players, those players will move on. Now I used Tomb Raider as an example, that brand will sell itself, but I feel like had it released on all platforms at once, the hype, the word of mouth, and the greatness of the game would have pushed sales more than what it got. But take a game that doesn’t have an established brand, and it might not work out so well. If the rumors are true and Dead Rising 4 comes to the PS4 this holiday season, I don’t think it will sell as well since while it is an established brand, it has never been a “must play” game since the first one.

                Opening games to all consoles from the beginning ultimately just gives you more hype and allows a bigger opportunity to grow the fan base, make sales, and build a franchise. In the example of Tomb Raider, when it was announced, it came off as Microsoft poaching a series since it didn’t have its own adventure game to release. I personally don’t see anything positive about this trend.

                2) Open World Games – Let me start by saying I love open world games. The ability to lose yourself in a world/city and have it filled with main missions, side quest, and fun activities is just a game recipe for fun. Not to mention games like GTA that have so much content you can spend hours just exploring. Games like the GTA series, Fallout, and probably this generation’s best example of how to do open world, Witcher 3 show how great these games can be. But that being said, not every game needs to try and shoehorn itself into the open world category. And even if a game does fit into the open world style, they need to have plenty of things to do that are worthwhile. Mafia 3 is an example of a game that has the setting that should be an open world game, but outside of its main missions and rackets, there isn’t much to see or do. Sure there are collectibles, but there isn’t anything that makes you want to explore the world. I love the Assassin’s Creed games, but even some of those have areas that don’t really need to be a full city, there just isn’t enough quality things to do. However there is a great solution, Hub worlds!

                I mentioned Assassin’s Creed (not the worst offender) but they do have a Hub system with AC3, Rogue, and Black Flag, and it works great. Some areas are big, some are smaller, but each has enough going on to make you want to explore, without getting lost in a huge city like Unity had. Another great example is the last 2 Tomb Raider games, especially Rise of the Tomb Raider. Big areas, each with plenty to do that is fun, plus each has their own feel, all make Rise a game that doesn’t need to be a full open world to give players the freedom the open world style games should be giving players.

                That’s the point of making a truly open world style game; freedom. Freedom to lose yourself in the world, to cause chaos or just explore. If you create a world that doesn’t make you want to do that, it’s just an empty world. Witcher 3 gets a lot of praise for its world, and it should. You can explore for hours and find plenty of interesting things. Same with Elder Scrolls Skyrim, huge world and filled with ways to entertain yourself without once touching any “real” quest. GTA is a series that builds itself on that freedom. Done right open world games are amazing. I wish developers wouldn’t worry about trying to be able to say they have a “huge open world” to sell the games, and focus creating hubs or environments you want to experiment with.

                3) Cheats, Mods, and taking advantage of glitches – Understand this is about single player games, and not multiplayer games. I have always been ok with people that find an advantage in a game and use it. In Skyrim most of my supplies and money come from finding the hidden chest and emptying it, selling what I didn’t want, and repeating the process. I even was making a bunch of iron daggers to boost my crafting skill. But then they patched the daggers because it made it “too easy”. In Fallout 4 I took advantage of the ammo glitch to make a ton of money, but again that was patched. I tried to do some XP glitches to gain XP faster so that I could have access to the really cool new features, but again patched. Here is my problem, if it’s a single player game, why patch something that doesn’t affect anyone but the person using the glitch? The glitches were just existing in the world and they didn’t break or ruin anything, and ultimately they improved my fun factor. I am all for developers fixing issues in games, or removing glitches that have the ability to crash your game, but for one that was found that affects no one but the player? Man let us have them! Money, XP, Supplies, these are all things that if we cheat the game to get, its only cheating us, if it even affects us. GTAV had a glitch that allowed you to retrieve a brief case several times worth a lot of money that patched out, but why? It didn’t transfer over to GTA Online, and really just playing the stock market in the game could make you a Billionaire, so why take the briefcase away?

                To me I see this is no different than the time in GTA Vice City during the mission where you properties are attacked, a NPC controlled car hit the 2 attackers during a cut scene causing them to crash. This allowed me to easily run up on them and kill them before they could do any damage. I took advantage of a glitch and it made the game easier. Should I have restarted the mission?

                Speaking about Fallout 4, I looked forward to a lot of the new systems pre-release. Building and crafting your own armor and other items sounded like a blast. But when I got the game, most of those features were locked behind perks, which required you to upgrade giving you the ability to upgrade 1 perk at a time. Not a horrible system, but when so many of the coolest features were locked behind upgrades, it was a bit of a grind. And bottle caps were hard to come by, and I needed stimpacks and better weapons, so I was cool with glitching the money. I only hurt myself spending the amount of time doing it as opposed to exploring the amazing world they created. When the exploits were patched and I had to level up, and spend time scavenging, I won’t lie I got bored and put the game down. Now that MODS are out and I’m about to use them, my character can do all the skills I wanted to do, I have enough bottle caps to buy supplies as needed. I’m enjoying the game again, and that is what the developers should want. So I didn’t play by the rules, didn’t hurt anyone, and PC players have been able to use MODS for years, why stop consoles?

                I also want to say I also consider Micro-transactions the same with single player content. If you want to pay for a quicker way to upgrade, weapons, or items, then go for it. Heck I have pretty much bought the “unlock all” option the last few years on WWE games. But I don’t like seeing the options on multiplayer, even when developers say that you can unlock all items in game without paying. That usually means to get the most badass weapon, be prepared to spend countless hours while someone else paid cash and is now destroying you.

                Again, cheats and MODS for multiplayer games, or even single player content that carries over to multiplayer then yeah patch that. If it’s a glitch that breaks the game, patch it. If it is just a short cut for players to do on their own free will because as a developer you missed, leave it alone.

                4) 50+ Hour Games – I should start this by saying when games are extended to 50 or more hours without the content to back them up. Games like Skyrim, Fallout, GTA, and Witcher 3 all are games I feel like justify the amount of time you can sink into them. In my mind, none of them have that sense of urgency to the games that make you plow through them, they are made to explore and enjoy. GTA is a series that really built the foundation of open world time killing games. I’ve beaten all of them and then still spend a ton of time playing and exploring the world. GTAV I believe at my last check I was over 125 hours in. Witcher 3 has so many quest you can spend countless hours playing and never getting bored. My friend put in around 250 hours doing everything he could do, before the DLC and never got bored. Elder Scrolls and Fallout are 2 series that I believe most people abandon the main and most side quest to create their own adventure.

                What I’m really looking at, and of course this will all be subjective, is games that feel like they have a huge layer of padding, rather it be missions or an entire chapter of a game that drags, a giant world that does nothing but you find yourself having to drive or travel, side quests that are bland, or even games that force all of this on you if you hope to chase that elusive Trophy/Achievement for completing it. I’ll give an example of a game that I feel like extends itself way too long; Assassin’s Creed Unity. This game’s world map looked like it was exploding with icons, but here is the thing, none of the side quests were that great. Now personally I played this after Witcher 3 so that might factor into it, but they felt like padding. They had potential but were just time sucks. The chest you could find, really didn’t add anything. I not going to sit here and bash this game (I played it months after it had been patched), I enjoyed the story and the gameplay, it just felt like all these “extras” they put in the game was just to add to the amount of hours they could brag about on the back of the box. Mafia 3 is another game that I put 30-40 hours into, that a lot of that time came from just driving since there was no fast travel, or doing the same racket activity over and over and over.

                The idea of being able to spend 100 hours on a game sounds great, but please make sure it’s a 100 hours I am going to enjoy. Unity and Mafia 3 were just two examples of games that could have been a great 15 experience but was extended with just padding. LA Noire was game that I really enjoyed, but event it felt like it could have trimmed the fat and cut one of the sections out. How many hours were spent in Mass Effect 2 and 3 doing the ever boring “mining” side quests? Even level based games can suffer from this, it’s not just open world style games. Even the great and amazing Uncharted 4 felt like it extended its game length by having 1 too many “Sorry the princess is in another castle” moments.

                It’s never a bad thing to have a long game, or a world filled with objectives to accomplish, you spend the money, you should have the ability to play for what you feel is worth it, I’m not arguing an amount of time a game should be capped at. What I’m referring to is a game should have all of those ideas, but also be an inspiration to make your own objectives. GTA is a series that is huge on personal inspiration, just youtube some people playing the game. Fallout and Elder Scrolls are games you almost can make a Sims like experience with you character.

                A series I want to put a spotlight on is the Hitman series. These games (not counting Absolution, though not a horrible game) are basically a level and an objective or two. While some levels can easily be beaten and moved on, heck I’ll even say that the latest Hitman game played start to finish would probably take maybe 8 hours, the game screams and inspires you to replay the levels. I have probably spent well over 60 hours in the 9 levels it has. That’s not counting escalation missions, contracts mode, or elusive targets. The game doesn’t force you to spend a lot of time, it makes you want to.

                This usually isn’t that big of an issue, but when you get behind in your backlog and see several games with long run times, or you complete a few games with long run times, a shorter but more focused game is beacon of light!

                Overall this isn’t really a big issue, I didn’t care about all the side stuff, and got bored with the rackets in Mafia 3 so I stopped trying to complete them all and still enjoyed the game. I just hope that developers in the future will make sure that when they start building a game they make sure that they don’t worry as much about the length of the game, and focus more on the quality of the time you spend playing.

                5) Playing it Safe – “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” that’s a mentality in the gaming industry that while isn’t always a bad thing, can lead to some bad decisions on how to handle a franchise. Not every new title in a series needs to be fresh and different, but they each need to feel like their own game. Fallout 4 is a game that introduced a lot of new features, but overall the game had a very familiar experience. While technology has improved to allow a bigger city and area, ultimately it felt like a (giant) mod or expansion to Fallout 3. While Fallout New Vegas had its issues, it felt different than Fallout 3. Mass Effect Andromeda has been criticized for a lot of things, which boils down to they played it too safe with the result being a game that is not an advancement for the series. Are both of those mentioned games good, yes of course, but they tread water. Even sports games have to do more, and improve with each installment. I’m a huge fan of WWE games. I can tell you right now that WWE 14 was a great game that has improved on what WWE 12 and 13 did well. But WWE 2K15 dropped and really barely added anything new or didn’t improve anything which caused it to be one of the least enjoyed game in the franchise by fans.

                I’ll say this, and I know a lot of people might disagree, but the Assassin’s Creed series is one that constantly tries to make each title fresh. AC 2 added so many new features and elements like new weapon attacks, money management, developing a town, all while still keeping the same core gameplay, it’s no wonder the game is considered one of that generations best games. It didn’t stop with AC2 either, Brotherhood added recruiting, AC3 added hub worlds, Black Flag added the element of sea travel, Unity added more side missions, and Syndicate brought the game as close to the modern age as we have seen. Now some of the features of those games worked, and some didn’t, but none of those games felt the same.

                Another Franchise I will get a big shout out to with this is Far Cry. The first game and its expansions and “remakes” set the tone. The sequel was its own game, ignoring a lot of the more sci-fi features of the first game. The 3^rdgame and 4^th game were both great but a lot of fans noticed as good as 4 was, other than a setting it didn’t set itself apart from 3. Not a bad thing, but it was noticeable. However the team decided to keep it in line with what they had already done, but take the franchise in a bold new route with Far Cry Primal. While the foundation of the game was the same, everything else felt fresh. It could have been call just Primal with no connections to the franchise and it would have been great, but it being part of the franchise only added to it.

                Now it is also important to note that you still have to find the line to provide fans with what they expected from a franchise. Call of Duty has made some big changes over the years, which I applaud them for. However they also have ignored the pleas from fans for a more traditional game. So while yes please grow, don’t disconnect with the fan base. If it’s one game that can be overlooked, but with CoD it seems like fans have been upset for a few games now and seemingly ignored.

                The key to this is make sure you take risks, but don’t throw away your foundations. Fans have to be able to pick up the game and while it might be different, they can still recognize it. You also have to be willing to admit when you have beat a dead horse. Sometimes no matter how much try to change it up, the franchise has ran its course.

                Overall I don’t think this is a major issue, but it is one that can make or break a long running franchise. Even a “part 2” runs the risk of being too similar. Luckily I can’t think of too many games that are playing it safe.

                6) Mid Console Life Upgrades – I’m talking here about the PS4 Pro and the Scorpion for Xbox. I know these offer more power which results in faster loader, increased speed, and yes 4K gaming, but honestly that hasn’t sold me yet. It’s nice, and I’m not say that if my PS4 crashed I wouldn’t replace it with a Pro, but I don’t need to upgrade just because. And depending on the price of the Scorpion, I could easily stick with a standard Xbox One if the cost is drastic. My issue isn’t what they do, my issue is that it will become a trend. If I can expect a new version a few years after release, why not skip the PS5 and get a PS5 Pro? I already feel like this generation started a year early with both companies not wanting to give up a year gap, so does this give Sony and Microsoft an excuse to rush out the next generation sooner even if the hardware isn’t ready?

                Listen I’m sold by the games, not really the system (to a point), so the mid-life consoles don’t really attract me. But I also don’t want to seem like I think they are horrible or waste of money. If this is something you want, I get it, I really do. In my mind I compare it to when an IPhone with come out, like the IPhone 6, then a year later we get the IPhone 6S. Is there ever really a huge upgrade with the 6S verses waiting for the 7?

                This isn’t a bad trend yet, 4K really blew up since the release of the PS4 and Xbox One so this is a way for companies to be able to take advantage of it. I just hope that this doesn’t start a trend in the future.

                  Closing Words – all of this is subjective, you may have agreed with me or hated what I wrote. I could be right, or I could be wrong. But I wanted to take the time to point out what I thought about these topics, at the very least to start a discussion. -Fear