The Troubling Future of Gaming

[Cube]

It seems like there are a fair few worrying trends in gaming today, mostly centred around greedy publishers and developers.

 

Microtransactions

 

They seemed to have mostly destroyed mobile gaming (in terms of quality, not popularity) and the situation is so bad on Android and iOS that the EU are even making regulations around them.

 

They keep popping up in console games, particularly in EA games, and are a bit of a mixed bag. I'm fine with how a few games do them: Mass Effect 3 did them well (especially with free multiplayer maps), and in Black Flag they aren't prominent and are essentially just unlock stuff you can earn without too much effort in the game.

 

Still, there is a potential that they could get much worse.

 

Early Access

 

In the right hands, these are great tools. They allow for smaller companies and individual people to get funding for the game throughout development. Even so, there is great potential for abuse: some games may never get finished, some may end with nowhere near the amount of featured promised.

 

I also think that the bigger publishers may think that, as people are fine with paying for unfinished games, paid betas will become more common.

 

Smaller Games

 

Here there are two recent culprits: Titanfall and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Worryingly, they both received really good reviews and appear to be selling well. This isn't about quality, it's about content.

 

With Titanfall, if the developers didn't want to make a proper campaign, the fair enough. However, the online is also lacking in features. There a re very few modes, no private lobbies or matches, no clan stuff (the last three you would think are vital for a game like this) and very little customisation (especially visually). Even if the gameplay was the best ever, I have no idea how it managed to get the scores it did.

 

And Ground Zeroes. Yes, it's more than a demo, but there's still very little content in the game and is probably best compared to Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. A similar amount of content, but it was 3 or 4 quid, not £20+. Kojima knew that not only could he get away with abusing MGS fans with this, but that they would be happy with it.

 

Can you imagine if this became more common. Imagine if the Haytham section of Assassin's Creed 3 (which is actually a more content than Ground Zeroes) was sold for £20 and then the rest of the game was still the full £40? Or if a publisher decided to split a game into 4 or 5 sections for £20 each? This has the most potential of getting out of hand, and the success of both of these will almost certainly encourage more.

[Hero-of-Time]

Ground Zeroes is a very short affair if you play from start to finish and then that's it. You then have a few more missions and another that is unlocked by finding all of the XOF badges. There's easily around 10 hours content on the disc and that's without trophy/achievement hunting and S ranking missions.

 

My biggest concerns in the industry at the moment are DLC and just how common it's getting to released unfinished games.

 

The whole DLC thing is getting beyond a joke now, with companies announcing stuff before the game has even arrived. Season passes are becoming more common place but there are times you are expected to drop the cash on these without actually knowing what you are going to get in the future.

 

The worst bit of DLC i've played in a long time has to have been on Dead Rising 3. It didn't really bring anything new to the table in terms of the storyline and each set of DLC were just a set of collectathons. Had there been nothing to collect you could have finished each one in about half an hour.

 

As for the unfinished games business, it seems developers/publishers have the mentality of just getting the game out of the door and then dealing/patching it once it's released. Games are now shipping that are half baked and quite frankly, rushed.

 

Not to turn this into a fanboy thread but Nintendo have been very good in both of these issues. Their DLC does seem to be well thought out, with most of it being free or at least priced fairly. The quality of their games speaks for themselves. Yes, they have had the odd glitch with the likes of Twilight Princess, Metroid M and Pokemon X & Y, but for the most part when they ship a game it is perfect and definitely the final product.

[Jimbob]

That too is something i hate, what is the need for DLC which adds content purposely taken from the retail release of a game. A few examples of this include, and not limited to

 

Mass Effect series

 

With the first one, Pinnacle Station. Mass Effect 2: Zaeed, Normandy Crash Site, Liar of the Shadow Broker + Arrival. ME3: Leviathon, From Ashes, Omega, Citadel

 

 

Weapon packs and costumes, not exactly ripped out so i'm not fussed on that.

 

Assassin's Creed II

 

Sequence 11 (Bonfires of the Vanities) and 12 (The one in that Port town before Venice). If you replayed the game, they slotted in the timeline. A prime example of content being ripped from the game and charged for later.

 

 

Heck, the entire Assassin Creed series (minus the 1st) had content purposely taken from the game and added at a later date. And inFamous: Second Son is another example of this.

 

As H.o.T mentioned, and i agree with him. Nintendo are an example of a company that release games that feel complete and content is added to the game that adds to the experience.

[Cube]

That too is something i hate, what is the need for DLC which adds content purposely taken from the retail release of a game. A few examples of this include, and not limited to

 

Mass Effect series

 

With the first one, Pinnacle Station. Mass Effect 2: Zaeed, Normandy Crash Site, Liar of the Shadow Broker + Arrival. ME3: Leviathon, From Ashes, Omega, Citadel

 

ME1: Pinnacle Station was clearly made after the game, as it's completely different to any other missions. A decent example of DLC. Bring Down the Sky was a mission cut partway through development that they finished off after release.

 

ME2: Zaeed and Normandy Crash site were free. Kasumi, Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival were definitely made after the game. Overall, great examples of DLC.

 

ME3: From Ashes was cut, but was included with some copies of the game (it was originally exclusive to that version). Omega was cut pretty early, and later finished after release (and it still didn't fit into the story). Leviathan was made as a response to the ending complains (and put the development of Omega on hold). Citadel was made after the game and was a celebration of the trilogy and one of the best DLCs ever made. A mixed bag for that one.

 

Before DLC was common, most of this wouldn't exist or would just be left unfinished or used in a sequel (like the cut dungeons for Wind Waker). From Ashes was the only one that was badly done (but doesn't bother me too much as it was free for me).

 

While it has a few blunders, Mass Effect is overall a great use of DLC (except for trying to buy it on PC).

[Grazza]

Mine are probably...

 

Online-only

I suppose this relates to games not having single player campaigns, but when I see a game like Titanfall that doesn't have an offline mode I just think "forget it". Whilst I understand the appeal of multiplayer, it's important to me that I can relax with my games at any time, regardless of whether there's an internet connection.

 

Prudishness

As games get more and more violent, we're seeing ridiculous amounts of prudishness at the merest hint of sexuality (in certain types of game), like how we couldn't see the proper Bravo Bikini in Bravely Default. Ridiculous. No one plays a whole game for erotic purposes; I just think they should be free to include all the themes they want.

 

RPGs Becoming Crap

OK, maybe that's not the most poetic way to put it, and there are exceptions - the Etrian Odyssey series just keeps getting better and better, but that's the only one. The two things that bother me most are:

 

Real-time combat replacing turn-based - as in Xenoblade Chronicles etc. Ever since Final Fantasy XII, most RPGs have featured ridiculous 'target lines' emitting from every character, and they just bash away at the enemy doing whatever moves you've programmed them to. I wouldn't mind, but I still haven't figured out if it matters where you stand! I like action games (they're logical in the way they use 3D space and time) and I like turn-based RPGs, but real-time combat seems an uncomfortable middle ground to me.

 

Incorrect scale - this might seem a strange one, but the best thing an RPG can do is actually put you in the game world. Trouble is, I haven't found one that could do this perfectly since Dragon Quest VIII. In that game, the overworld is to exactly the same scale as the towns, which cannot be said even for the much-acclaimed Ni no Kuni. You can go in all the buildings and you know that each door will lead somewhere that makes sense. Compare that to the false scale of something like Bravely Default and you'll see the drop in immersion. Even when you look at correct-scale games like (modern) Final Fantasy or Xenoblade, the towns are just shells - only there to be dotted with NPCs and 'Quests'.

 

Oh, one more...

 

2.5D Replacing 2D

It's great that 2D gameplay is back, but such games using polygons just don't have the charm of those with sprites. 3D is great, but only for 3D games. Sprite games could just get better and better, and yet they're mostly kept to NES level.

[Debug Mode]

I've largely been unaffected by the DLC issue as I've stuck away from the big franchises like Call of Duty etc as they just don't interest me. I really liked the Fallout 3 DLC though and felt that they were genuine pieces of work that came after the game had been released and had taken people's opinions into consideration as to what needed changing. Even if the weren't, they still offered ridiculously good value and all came with the works basically (new voice acting, scenarios, areas, assets etc), compared to the FPS cash cow of the last generation which has effectively standardised gaming offering mainly just simple maps, and moving on to "bonuses" which have been offered by other services for free.

 

Even though I remain unaffected, it is fucking infuriating to see how EA are treating Battlefield 4. How they can get away with releasing DLC for a game that appears to be universally broken to an extent is beyond me and I hope it bites them hard enough in the ass that they learn from it.

 

Always online is also another thing that has me worried and is the main reason why I'm still wary of the Xbox One as it's no doubt going to come back for certain titles who need that "extra power" via the cloud. EA (Oooh, these fuckers again) finally got around to making Sim City playable offline despite screams of how it would be impossible, the reverse engineering would take however long blah blah when some one had managed it by themselves with absolutely no problem and, if I recall correctly, no adverse effects to the gameplay aside from not being able to save locally.

 

I just can't help that despite the backlash these companies have seen, it's going to grow more pervasive so that the game no longer is an independently functioning product, but dependant on a service that can take away the whole thing at a moment's notice. We've seen multiplayer servers go down, it's sad but we all recognise it's going to come sooner or later, but this could mean locking you out of a single player game for no good reason. Heck, Games for Windows is closing down in a couple of months, any games that haven't been moved to other services will just not boot as the authentication server will go down. DRM is just no good and offers the consumer nothing.

 

A final concern of mine is the influence of smart phone gaming on the industry. We're all ready seeing it, the 3DS looks like it has peaked in Japan, it's picking up in the west again but probably wont for long and the bigger developers like Square Enix are definitely seeing where the consumers are heading. The lack of buttons doesn't concern the casual gaming audience and I'm just not sure how Sony and Nintendo will keep up. The form factor needs to shrink, but this will see a hike in the price (that wont be able to compete with a multi-use device) or very little progression in technical capability that the average consumer wont batter an eyelid at.

[Serebii]

Another worrying trend I've noticed, touched a little upon by Cube but in a different sense, is that the launch day consumer has essentially become a beta tester. So often now, games are being released with game breaking errors that require patching. Some of these patches are available day one, which is somewhat fine (though still unacceptable), but others are just broken continually.

 

A prime example of this is Battlefield 4. Even to this day there are so many game-breaking errors across all formats, and the game has been out for months. Skyrim on PS3 had loads of issues too for quite a while

 

Publishers have taken to demanding that games hit a certain date, typically late October to late November in order to hit the sales. As such developers are having to rush to get things out, even if they're not complete. They feel that, since the patching system exists, it's absolutely fine to do so.

 

We're starting to get patches that are bigger than a lot of games. A patch shouldn't be so big. 1GB is the absolute maximum it should be, and that's still too big in my view, especially as installation of games is now mandatory on the latest consoles. Patches should be used to fix game breaking glitches that somehow made it past the beta tests.

 

To make it worse, reviewers routinely miss this and other things like it. They never notice it or get "promised" by the publisher that it'll be fixed, leading to miscommunication between reviewer and consumer.

 

Thankfully we have self publishing indies, and Nintendo, who delay a game if it's necessary, but it's a worrying trend into which the entire industry is falling. It needs to be stopped.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Serebii

[Shorty]

The features in the OP don't really bother me. I've become pretty accustomed to them and don't really find an issue. The only time it bothers me is when it seems things are reserved as microtransactions only, with no way to unlock them as a reward for your gameplay. Arkham City for example had a tonne of challenge modes with high difficulties, but beating them didn't provide you with anything rewarding. Yet they had all these cool character skins which they only gave away for a fee. I love replaying a game for skins, I beat Metal Gear Solid over and over again just to unlock things like the white suit.

 

To me the "troubling future of games" is summed up just by a generally worrying draught on the horizon. After the two current-gen consoles were announced last year, I was constantly back and forth about which one I would get. I never for a second thought that I'd be here, nearly 6 months after the launch of both, having bought neither! There's absolutely no game I must have, and nothing up and coming that I can't wait for, either. In fact there's only three games I'm really excited for, and they're on Wii U and PS3. I'll give you a hint: they're the 4th, 8th and 5th games in their respective series.

[RedShell]

Not to turn this into a fanboy thread but Nintendo have been very good in both of these issues. Their DLC does seem to be well thought out, with most of it being free or at least priced fairly. The quality of their games speaks for themselves. Yes, they have had the odd glitch with the likes of Twilight Princess, Metroid M and Pokemon X & Y, but for the most part when they ship a game it is perfect and definitely the final product.

Yep.

There's a funny moment in one of the WarioWare D.I.Y. tutorials that mentions making sure you properly check for bugs before shipping your games, to avoid having to recall it and damage sales.

But it's clearly something that Nintendo have always taken very seriously and still do.

 

In fact there's only three games I'm really excited for, and they're on Wii U and PS3. I'll give you a hint: they're the 4th, 8th and 5th games in their respective series.

Hmm... Smash Bros. MK8. And...

Yeah, gonna need another clue for that last one.

[Hero-of-Time]

 

Hmm... Smash Bros. MK8. And...

Yeah, gonna need another clue for that last one.

 

Persona 5.

[Shorty]

[tapedeck]

The death of local multiplayer.

FIFA is still the mainstay in most cases but the focus on online gaming means that gamers don't go round to their buddies houses to game anymore. I'd rather talk to and see my mates than talk to them over a headset.

[Shorty]

Over the last year or two I've played a lot of local multiplayer. Borderlands 2, Diablo 3, Super Mario 3D World, Nintendoland, Lego Marvel, Dungeon Defenders, Rayman Origins/Legends. The aforementioned Smash Bros and MK8 are on the horizon. Diablo 3 is getting a PS4 release, Sacred 3 is coming to 360/PS3. Dungeon Defenders 2 will have local multiplayer. The CoD games continue to have split-screen.

 

Plus, it's not like the old games have gone and evaporated, they can all be revisited.

 

Are you sure your friends haven't just grown out of gaming?

Edited March 26, 2014 by Shorty

[Retro_Link]

@tapedeck Speaking of which...

 

Gametrailers Editorial: Play more Local Multiplayer

 

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/dsispd/editorial-play-more-local-multiplayer

 

Towerfall looks cool, would love to be in a situation to be able to play it in local.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Retro_Link

[pratty]

It seems the Wii-U might be the last fairly gamer-friendly console, I could see it the last console I ever own the way things are going, after which I'll probably just go 'retro' gaming only.

 

Here's the typical modern Sony/Microsoft consumer experience as I see it:

 

Buy game £30-50 at launch, miss out on retailer exclusive DLC content.

 

Game takes an eternity to install before you can even play it, hours in some cases. Then lengthy updates every time you load the game after that.

 

Day one patch to fix bugs, what exactly is the point of the disc? Might as well download the whole thing then. Game is potentially broken without internet connection and/or developer/publisher servers online.

 

Majority of game is online, small token single player mode. Local multiplayer dropped or half arsed at best.

 

Discover in game graphics are nothing as impressive as the cut scene graphics shown in the adverts and trailers in the absence of gameplay footage.

 

Discover gameplay is average but yet the game is somehow quite good and addictive, due to the fact the developers are scientifically inducing the release of dopamine and other feel-good reward chemicals, by having you fullfill hundreds of all too often utterly pointless achievements.

 

Additional modes that were once free and gave you value for money are now DLC.

 

Day one DLC announced months before launch, could have easily have been included in the game but was purposely left out.

 

Find out DLC is actually on the disk, and you are paying simply to unlock it which does not incur the developer any extra cost.

 

Microtransactions cynicnally employed to make them necessary, or at least handicap you if you don't pay. You pay for virtual content that is already created and simply duplicated by the game at no additional cost to the devleoper, eg ammo, lives, continues, level skips etc.

 

One year later the game is re-released with all the DLC and extra content included, you feel like a mug for supporting the developer and buying the inferior edition at launch.

 

Multiplayer servers shut off after 2-3 years to encourage you to buy the latest game in the series.

 

Servers shut off making the necessary bug-fixing patch install impossible, leaving even the single player mode glitchy at best, if not broken. Game disc is now a £40 coaster. Fear not because because disk are on the way out anyway, no more physical game collections, borrowing/lending/selling games.

 

Game console monitors you to help companies better sell you crap, because that's why people buy games consoles?

 

Ok I exaggerate a bit and paint a worse case scenario, but even so I fail to see how a lot of these 'innovations' of modern gaming benefit the gamer.

 

I don't think modern gaming is necessarily bad, the games can be just as good, just the delivery method of it to the consumer sucks in my opinion.

[nekunando]

I'm not excited by the future of gaming at all right now and feel absolutely no interest in PS4 or XBOX One

 

I've had plenty of fun with my Wii U since having it bought for me as a ridiculously generous Christmas present from my brother in 2012 but would definitely have purchased it myself at some point in 2013 when you see some of the great deals there has been on the console since those early months!

 

Having said that, neither the Wii U or 3DS are matching up to the experiences I had with the Wii and DS as both are missing something special that made those consoles so exciting. The lack of innovation is probably the largest factor as the Wii Remote paved the way for interesting new ways to play, particularly in games such as Pro Evolution Soccer, Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies and, of course, Wii Sports, while the touch screen of the DS provided games such as Trauma Centre: Under the Knife, Kirby: Power Paintbrush and The World Ends With You, games that weren't really possible before.

 

I hope Nintendo blow us away again in the future, but when I'm constantly turning on the N64 to play things such as ISS 64, Mario Kart 64, F-Zero X, 1080 Snowboarding, Wave Race 64 and much more and feeling effortless joy beyond what I've probably experienced for years, it makes you wonder if it's possible to recapture some of that magic. I miss being able to go out and buy a game knowing that you only need to stick the cartridge into the console and you're immediately ready to go without sitting through all the installations and updates that are commonplace in 2014

 

I'm not saying everything was better back then, but it was a golden era for games throughout the nineties and I know I'll never have the pleasure of experiencing that again. It genuinely makes me feel a little sad, but at least I'll always have those amazing memories..

[Goafer]

I'm not excited by the future of gaming at all right now and feel absolutely no interest in PS4 or XBOX One

 

Exactly what I'm feeling at the moment, which is why I'm going back and playing a load of games I missed first time round. The PS2, GC and Dreamcast have some amazing games that still hold up today, so I'm going back and playing some.

 

Currently working through the Gamecube. Since I didn't really have an interest in it at the time, I've got a tonne of games to work through. Then on to the PS2. I'm leaving the Dreamcast until last, since it's the one that I've played most recently.

 

The patching problem of modern games really hit me recently when I tried to play GTAV after a few months break. I had to wait for about an hour for a patch to download and install. Earlier that day I had played a GC game and it just fired up.

 

I think I've finally hit that age where retro or old games have become my main source of gaming and modern games are no longer an interest. I'm basically that old guy that yells at kids "You call that gaming?! In my day we had 2 buttons and one of them barely worked. You don't know how good you've got it. Now get off my lawn. No you can't have your Gears of Duty back."

[Grazza]

I do think the N64 and GC days were better. The PS2/GC seems to be the last generation that could get the balance between "core" and "mainstream" just right. Maybe it was the last time budgets were small enough. The games seemed to be as "hardcore" as the ones from previous generations, yet with totally up-to-date (for the time) production values.

 

Perhaps it's because I follow Nintendo (and before that, Sega), but nothing I particularly like has actually made it into the modern, mainstream market. There hasn't been room for Nintendo the last two generations (there was in terms of sales, but I mean being part of the main games industry). And even if I look at a 3rd-party publisher I was once very fond of, Square-Enix, they haven't really got anything quite right (to my liking) for almost a decade.

 

Is there still room for Metroid? Will Zelda and Dragon Quest ever become as good as they once were? I live in hope, but being realistic, I can't really see these things happening.