It's been a while since my last blog post.
A lot's happened since then and a lot's likely to happen between now and the next blog post. For starters, the videogame industry's been in a heavy state of flux. Some good, and a lot of it bad. It seems that as time goes on, a lot of developers and publishers in the AAA side of things are getting more and more desperate for money. First we saw the Konami snafu with Silent Hills and the major amounts of disappointment and even downright outrage that came from its fanbase along with it. Being honest, when I'd learned what happened to Silent Hills... to say I was disappointed would be a huge understatement. I was even more than a little angry when it was announced that Silent Hills would be turned into a casino machine. But with everything going on in and out of the industry, some part of me knew to expect a disappointment regarding Silent Hills. I was just hoping it wouldn't be something that embarrassing on Konami's part.
And open the floodgates for a lot of other not-so-nice things that, combined, spell out a not-too-bright future for the videogaming industry, like the Deus Ex Augment Your Preorder thing or the presence of microtransactions in $60 games, for instance. I'm not gonna make too big a stink about the microtransaction thing since apparently there's no use fighting it, but I will still voice my concerns about it. What are my concerns? Well, for starters, the fact that apparently there's such an emphasis on graphics over gameplay in the AAA industry now that videogame budgets are spiraling out of control. Or at least, that seems to be the case since the companies that release these games are trying to find more and more ways to make more money than they can with all the base game sales combined. An example: Evolve. I rest my case.
To be honest, if AAA developers and publishers wanted to keep their budgets from balooning out of control and forcing them to adopt shadier and shadier business practices, maybe they should focus more on gameplay than graphics. My reasoning: you can have the greatest and most complex visual fidelity and detail in the world... and still have crappy gameplay. When you focus on graphics, your gameplay suffers since you're more focused on making your game look good instead of play good. When you focus on gameplay, your graphics might suffer a bit, but your audience will have a much better time playing your game. And that's how it should be, anyway. We don't play games to look at shiny graphics; we play games to have a good time.
I think that pretty much concludes my current blog post.
