***Please let it be very clear I'm not advocating for any of this, I'm just annoyed I'm getting older and have less time on my hands, and am calling it as I see it in the gaming industry.***
As I get older I have less and less time to do things I like. The main thing I like to do is play video games of course, and I notice more and more these days when a game is wasting my time. Usually, it's needless fetch quests to get the thing for the lady to give you the thing for the dude to give me a thing for the shopkeep who with-held the thing I needed to give the sorcerer who would then unlock the seal to the final gate locking away my prized mythical bastard sword, I'm inclined more these days to say fuck all that shit I'm playing the game where I just shoot stuff in the face now.
This is the dilemma I find myself in. I live in a world now where I enjoy a game like Doom with its white-knuckle pacing from start to finish with no lollygagging in between, versus a game like say Metroid Prime 2 Echos which is admittedly a much more cleverly designed game, but one that asks the player to re-traverse all its areas 3 god damn times.
The thing of it is though, is games like Doom are more successful now than they've ever been, and by that I don't mean literally Doom as let's face it original Doom was one of the most successful games of all time and new Doom will never sniff that success (though it exists now in a sea of FPS games so to see how well it did now proves my point). I mean simply games that aren't 40 hour long linear experiences. We used to live in a time where JRPG's ruled the roost in sales. Now a game like Star Ocean is seen as contrived and lauded at for doing nothing for its genre.
I wonder though if it's more that those kinds of games haven't grown up with the target audience that loved them. We're getting older, we don't have as much time. If we're asked to sit through an unskippable cut-scene between two characters we don't like, that's a problem. It's even more a problem when we have to sit through that cut-scene after losing to a boss fight with no save in between said cut-scene and are forced to see it again.
There's a reason cell phone games are doing so well. You play them in bits and snippets and they give you a sense of hollow progression that satisfies, until you start to notice that hollow part and hate yourself later. Modern games need to grow up though. Some have, some haven't still, and it's not a blanket endorsement for console Tetris either. Games like Fallout and GTA still do well and you can pour hundreds of hours into those. But they're no longer the focal point of the masses. Games that get the most attention and most hours are games like League of Legends, Counterstrike, and the most recent hit Overwatch which is simply Counterstrike's addictive loot drops meets the player friendly Team Fortress. All of these games are played in bits and snippets, though usually longer for their addictive qualities. Never though is the player feeling like they've wasted any time by the end as they've had numerous points at which they were rewarded. Sit down with a JRPG by contrast, and it'll take you maybe 2 hours to beat a dungeon, and even by doing that the game doesn't make it entirely clear that you've progressed as tangibly as unlocking that long sought after skin in Overwatch.
A game like Pokemon Go comes out to smashing success and people wonder why. I look at that and go, yep, that's where gaming is going and it makes perfect sense. Conversely, I don't see something like Pokemon Go as what will be the "death" of consoles, I don't actually ever really see that happening. I do however, see a larger chunk of money to be had with something like Pokemon Go. A game where you get bits and snippets of progression simply for walking around in the world that you live in anyway. Absolutely brilliant. And, it might flame out, but likely only to its inevitable competition seeking those millions of Pokemon Go dollars.
What I also see is a game like that shaping how console games are made, and how developers choose to design their games around the player's time. They understand now that people playing their games have less time for them, and they have to accommodate, and they will, and they are. Pokemon Go, Overwatch, these are games that will take up more of the gaming market share as we move on. I also have a bet the Nintendo NX will be doing something similar in that it's going to focus on smaller, bite sized games that have a big financial impact for them, while still making room for massive Zelda games, but it won't be their focus anymore.
*Maybe, we'll see, I can predict as well as the weatherman 2 weeks out lol*
