The Sorry State Of Gaming in 2011, And What The Future Beholds

If you are interested in video games and want to go to a conference then LA is the place. There’s E for All, E3, and Games Day just to name a few. But if you weren’t able to get to a conference this year but want to know some of what people are saying about the direction of video games then there are quite a few thoughts that are floating around – some good, some bad, but all interesting.

Perhaps one of the most popular trends, and one of the most threatening to big gaming (and gaming consoles) are companies like Zynga and games like Angry Birds and Farmville. Cheap (or free), purely time-killers and useable on mobile devices. These casual games and casual gamers are inundating the market, pushing prices towards zero, and starting another trend that has been taken note of. Micro-fees and virtual purchasing.

Want your Farmville farm to grow cupcakes? .99 cents. Want your character in that Sims-eqse game to wear a new outfit? $2.99. And if you can’t charge it to a credit card, no worries. They’ll start up a retail game card for you and you’re golden. This is great for companies like Zynga that are reportedly making $50 or $60 million off of these micro-fees. But they’re bad for the kids on Facebook (who shouldn’t be on Facebook anyway) that don’t own credit cards and perhaps don’t even realize who is being charged or that they are being charged for these purchases.

It’s real money, kids, and your parents pay it. There was a story that ran not too long ago about a parent who sued someone (Apple, Zynga – someone, can’t remember) because their kid racked up $200 in an afternoon on micro-fees for a game where they weren’t being asked to verify the payment every time because there was an attached credit card on the account. Ouch. Flipside of that – parent – don’t have an attached credit card to your kid’s gaming (or Facebook) account!

Falling flat

Another interesting (and perhaps failing) trend is the prevalence of motion-sensors instead of controllers. While this may seem very cool in theory – the execution falls flat a little. As David Wong puts it on Cracked -

“Therefore, it completely wipes out about 90 percent of your input options. Things like the ability to actually move your character. Because there is no stick or control pad, you literally can’t navigate around the game world (you kind of slide from one fight to the next). So for most of the game, your Jedi stands there like [an idiot] while stormtroopers stupidly amble into your flailing lightsaber.”

Not having to use controllers sounds great, right? I mean, we’ve seen it with the Wii, and it works. But only in very limited applications where it actually makes sense to use motion control. Like bowling. Or golf. Or that dance game. But the rest of the time, it’s pretty idiotic and inaccurate. But its the next love affair of games because they’ve run out of plot.

That’s another trend – everyone scratching their heads and going, “Where do we go from here?”.

Most games these days are usually shooter games, and they’re usually a reboot or a sequel. A game needs to come out that does something innovative with plot structure!

Finally, the most double-edged sword is the switch from one-off buys of games to subscription services and digital versions. While this is great for the companies, it’s not always so great for the customer – read – the Sony hack, constant login, sometimes no offline mode, servers being weird, paying monthly, and so much more. But that looks like where everything is going.

So brace yourselves, because it looks like we’re going into a creative landfill where everyone has to pay for everything all the time and people are more intrigued by crashing colorful birds into wooden crates. Have fun in 2012!

This has been a guest post from Amber Daniels, a freelance writer with a gamer soul – her Steam account is loaded and she never plays anything involving chucking birds around. Wide screen monitors, conventions, conference LA is the home of her nerdy heart.