David Swan
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 05:25
Your IT -
Entertainment
Page 2 of 3
My main argument, however, is not against the system itself in terms of tech specs and flaws, but more the ideology behind its success and what it represents, and the threat this success poses to the industry. You could argue for days about how the Wii should have a more robust processor or more embedded memory, but I'm more concerned about the lasting impact of a system that sells like hotcakes, but its owners don't buy games and the games they do buy are either substandard or are aimed primarily at families and children.
There is a place for these kind of games, of course, but Nintendo's take on the gaming landscape is persistenty juvenile and pure, at the expense of plot depth and adult themes.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board in the USA lists just seven M-rated DS games, including
GTA: Chinatown Wars, out of over 1,000 DS titles. An M rating means the game is for mature audiences, and is equivalent of an MA rating here. The Wii has 26 M-rated games out of nearly 1,000 listed on ESRB's website. This is around .7% for the DS and 2.6% for the Wii, respectively.
As trends like these continue, adult gaming as a culture will be pushed further and further underground. These changes won't occur overnight, but will more likely be a lasting effect from a time in which family and party games, "casual" games, outsold deeper, more serioius games that require in-depth thinking andmore involved gameplay, as well as hours spent. Some of these adult-focused games won't even be made, as they won't economically viable compared to their cheaper and more family-friendly counterparts.
Serious Wii titles such as
Winter, Project H.A.M.M.E.R. and
Civilization Revolution each promised a fulfilling hardcore experience, but were promptly cancelled, which seems a travesty when games like
Party Fun Pirate and
Fantasy Aquarium World survive. Sega's recent effort
Madworld has been praised for its over the top violence but has sold poorly, as has
House of the Dead: Overkill. I'm not stating that violent games are better than family games, for it's ridiculous to say one genre of game is better than another, but rather it's disappointing to see that traditional gamers, those who played Quake and Doom, will eventually lose out to the kids who now play
G-Force and
Sonic and Mario at the Olympics, and gaming as an activity will become less engaging as a result.
As sales of these casual games spiral, its at the expense of hardcore games, which don't make as much economic sense to the CEOs and publishing firms out there who have the good ol' dollar at the forefront of their thinking.
Who else is to blame? And what can you do, as a gamer? Read on.
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