State of the Industry: A Lack of Focus

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by The Exterminat

© 2010 Nicholas F. Laborde

In the current gaming world, we see success everywhere. From Call of Duty’s booming sales, to the ongoing games such as Team Fortress 2, and the underdog indie games, there is a vast amount of content out there for everybody. But our industry faces a problem: a lack of focus.

Over the past few years, I can see an ongoing trend. Games (and the developers behind them) are starting to lose focus, and their sight is being blurred out by the prospect of money (Activision is a primary example, but all companies want your money, regardless of their greedy CEO’s).

A growing problem is the amount of generic First Person Shooters (FPS) clones out there that we can attribute to a certain franchise called, Call of Duty.

But first, let’s have a brief history lesson.

All this has happened before, all this will happen again…

If you know your gaming history, the famous Gaming Crash of 1983 was primarily caused by literally every game being a clone of another game.

People were misinformed, games turned out to be crappy copies of other games, and people just stopped buying games. Then, Nintendo saved us all in 1985 by bringing the NES to North America, and the rest is history.

I can’t help but notice this appearing again in our current industry state. Nearly every shooter that comes out is a clone of Call of Duty.

As a beta tester for Medal of Honor, I can confirm that even MEDAL OF HONOR, the series that spawned Call of Duty (the original Medal of Honor on PC team split up; one branched off to form Infinity Ward, and the other, Gearbox Software) has to copy the very series it created to ensure success.

DICE is one of (if not THE) king of multiplayer shooters and coming off of the success of Bad Company 2, I thought they would never fail. But Medal of Honor is essentially Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 both rolled together to form one game. It’s a decent game at best.

Out of focus…

This can be attributed, once again, to the lack of focus. One could go so far as to say that any modern war game based in modern times is a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare ripoff.

I do agree however, that people tend to move with that particular bandwagon, and in all honesty, the modern war games that exist typically try to clone off of Call of Duty.

DLC: Recycle, Reuse, Ripoff…

Next, we have a hot topic culprit: DLC (downloadable content). Many don’t understand that game development is an extremely long, tedious process, and the final product is never 100% what the developer wanted it to be.

In a current trend, developers tend to lock this unfinished content onto the game files, and plan to finish it later and sell it. So, essentially, they charge you for content you already own on your disc or download. This is a terrible strategy in my opinion (and so many vocal others) and needs to die quickly. It’s ripping people off.

DLC also shows a lack of focus by reusing content and/or making people pay outrageous prices for it. Once again, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is my example.

The first map pack contained 5 maps. But, two of them were from Call of Duty 4. To make it worse, it was FIFTEEN DOLLARS. Yes. A quarter of the game’s price, and for 3 new maps. Obviously, I did not buy them (at that point I had completely stopped playing MW2 anyway).

Gamers were outraged, and justifiably, but our voices were not heard. For the Call Of Duty community is a generally casual community. By this, I mean we have people who have never played a shooter before pick up this game and play it constantly. As a result, they see DLC and instantly buy it.

Modern Warfare 2 sold hugely (12 million the last time I checked?) and a large number of those sales would have been casuals. The DLC pack for the game set new records, regardless of how many people were outraged by it. And with the second map pack, they did it all over again.

It will undoubtedly continue, and the focus won’t be on gamers enjoyment, but profit and the ‘bottom line’.

So just where is the vision?

Many developers are losing the vision behind games: to have a good time and enjoy the game being presented.

They realize that massive successes such as Modern Warfare 2 can get away with things like this, and then they think they can do it too. An example would be Modern Warfare 2 PC version selling for US$60. Anyone else noticed nearly every big PC title after that has sold for US$60 with no explanation at all?

From charging us for content we already own, to implementing terrible DRM in games like Assassin’s Creed 2, to repackaging content, the industry has lost focus on what really should matter. It’s all about money, and not the consumers.

Companies like Bungie and Valve ensure that there are still some good developers out there who care about their consumers. Valve is extremely generous in giving us so much content in games such as Team Fortress 2, and Bungie makes sure their games strive for excellence first.

Bungie charges for it’s DLC, but by the time the next DLC arrives, the first becomes free.

While our industry will probably not crash again as in 1983, we undoubtedly have work to do.

Companies are getting closed due to the lack of variety in the industry, money is companies’ main concern, and the consumers have become an afterthought.

Corporations will always want money and nothing else. But our industry is one of the biggest, best industries on this planet. We encourage innovation, create art, and tell some of the best stories around.

But until we regain our focus and set our goals on what is important, such as fun, value and quality, our industry will continue to decline.

© 2010 Nicholas F. Laborde

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