Barbelith Underground > Games & Gameplay > Has Gameplay been Sacrificed at the Altar of the Evil Gods of Graphics?

I would argue that crap games have always been around and that mediocre games have always been the norm. There has always been a surplus of generic storylines and games that basically plagiarise last year’s hit game gameplay mechanics. It’s not like the past was exactly rosy – the videogame crash of 83 was almost singularly brought about by the vast, vast quantities of truly terrible games that were being released. A market so used to shit that even Custer’s Revenge got published and so saturated that copies of ET had to be buried.

I would say, however, that in recent years (especially these past couple of years with the Wii and the DS) we have seen a slight movement towards pick up and play games - games that are instantly accessible to the widest possible audience. In this regard I suppose that modern ideas of gameplay have seen something of a shift of goal posts - we seem to be moving away from the idea that elaborate and complicated interaction (see elite/civilisation/morrowind) are equivalent to good gameplay, to the idea that simplicity, elegance and fun (see wii sports/guitar hero) are the key ingredients. Notice how I used Morrowind instead of Oblivion? Even Oblivion, which should still probably be considered on the elaborate/high time investment side of the fence, saw something of a push towards the middle ground with a much simpler interface with quick travel, the map and the quest system. This trend of simplification however is not the same as dumbing down, rather it is a process by which games are becoming more intuitive and immediate whilst leaving plenty of scope for innovation and originality.

I don’t know, maybe I’m seeing trend where there is not one, but it does feel like at least part of the market has moved towards accessibility in terms of gameplay (perhaps because the previous teenage male dominated, lots of time to invest market has been swallowed by MMOs).

As for storylines and narratives (a subject that I feel should be kept at least partly separate from gameplay) I would argue that, in games where story is relevant (a slightly different breed to the aforementioned guitar hero/wii sports), we have seen a push towards contextualisation and away from the arcade in such a way that I think we are seeing much more cinemographic experiences in today’s game blockbusters. For example, as has been mentioned already mentioned, GTA 4 is incredibly rich with story and politics like a modern day Scarface, where as its early predecessors were much more arcade-y to the point where the indulgence in violence seemed almost pornographic (i.e. it lacked context), and seemed aimed at drumming up hype in a sensationalist media. Sure there is a lot of cliché out there in plenty of popular games still, but perhaps less so than in the blockbuster movie market. I would also say that, even though games are in their infancy, we are starting to see a handful of designers like Fumito Ueda or Ragnaar Tørnquist (although Dreamfall wasn’t a patch on The Longest Journey) who have incredibly strong and independent styles of their own. So yeah, personally I think that storylines are better and more original than have ever been and frankly if you disagree you are probably just playing the wrong games.

Finally, in some kind of strange conclusion to all this, I’d like to say that in a way high production values, the vast investment of time and money video game now represent, are our savior. Whilst it is true that producers maybe somewhat scared to fly too far away from the status quo it is also true that there now is no way we will ever go back to the truly derivative slums of crash ’83. Furthermore, gamers are quite a discerning group of consumers, producers can’t afford to completely stifle innovation – it is not coincidental that some of the most successful games/consoles in the past few years were also some of the most innovative. So no I don't think there has been a negative effect, but I do think there has been a move away from somewhat geeky convolution and the ferverant detailing of the bedroom devoloper to a different kind of detailing, elegence and polish.