Sit Down, Shut Up & Play

It seems the current trend in gaming right now is MMOs and other online gameplay styles intended to draw people into use of the same product over and over and over again until they burn out and start a new game. Which is okay, but it means that games will be hit or miss, for every World of Warcraft and Halo which will get millions of people using their online services bringing in quite a large amount of subscription revenue, there's hundreds of games designed with the same intent that barely sell at all.

Obviously this style just doesn't work for everyone, a lot of people who enjoy video games can't invest 20 hours a day into gaming and the two or three hours a week they can spend isn't enough to justify the cost, not to mention you fall behind every other person in the (typically very competitive) communities.

The other trend is the "casual" mini-game, which you can play for only two or three hours a week and feel like you're getting enough out of the game, or you can dump hundreds of hours into them as well. Basically, they revolve around simplistic gameplay meaning that. . .well, they lack content.

Those are the two main types of games that companies are going for, the hardcore time-investment or the cheap gimmicks, on top of that there are the "real" games, like Bioshock or the Baldur's Gate series, which are great,and are based on delivering one big-ass bundle of entertainment (typically the games range from 10-40 hours of gameplay, but can go well over 200 hours in some cases) yet really do require that you invest a lot of time into them.

I don't want any of that shit at the moment, if I want to play a game, I either have to invest quite a few hours to make a dent in progressing through it, or have some inane mini-game which can wear thing very quickly. This is meant to be a form of consumable entertainment, so why are there so few options that can be completely enjoyed in two or three hours and feel like you're getting a full experience?

It's obviously a great market to try and exploit, if there were more games out there that I could beat in the time it took to watch Shaun of the Dead, then I'd really be happy because it means I could enjoy a medium I like without having the major downsides. There's only really one current game title out there that fills that role, Portal, easily the best game of last year.

Imagine the possibilities of a market where there were games out there which you could enjoy without a heavy time investment that weren't just cheap mini-games? It's a perfect market because the average age of gamers in Australia is 28 years old, and somehow I don't think there are too many people that old who still live with their parents, have no job and no social life. Especially seeing as by then people tend to be starting families so they really can't invest the 40 or so hours some games like Mass Effect demand of you in order to get the most out of your purchase.

Not to mention that there are many forms of entertainment out there specifically designed to be around two to three hours long because it can be enjoyed in one sitting, or a few short periods of time. Movies, television, quite a few books . . . yet the emerging form of consumption has failed to realise that if you put out content that can be enjoyed properly in a reasonably short space of time. If developers could just take advantage of this instead of insipidly trying to churn out the next WoW, gaming might be seen as something other than just something for 16 year old boys with long greasy hair and pimply visages.

Nintendo knows that if you make gaming accessible, people will do it, the "non-game" releases such as Brain Training on the DS is proof of that, so why doesn't anyone want to take the next step?

I haven't done any blog entries in a while because I've been busy. . .and I just didn't feel like it, so consider this a half hearted attempt to get back on track.