So, it’s been said again and again that there’s nothing good coming out of Hollywood but sequels and the same revolving-door safe bets. It’s the nature of any industry fuelled by investors’ capital rather than their own steam that they succumb to the safe way out rather than taking the road less travelled. Once you have a couple of million dollars of someone else’s money in your hands and they’re stingy bastards that want their return on their schedule, there’s really not much to be done by their will. It’s funny how self-made men and women all over the world become nothing more than frontpeople that are vicariously lived through by financials.

That whole mess aside, enter the games industry. More and more do we see game series emerge rather than new, innovative and powerful gaming experiences being invested into. The revolution that was gaming has died down and we now see, very clearly, that the largest studios with the largest budgets are making ‘safe’ games. Of course, this also includes titles like Gears of War 3 which might not immediately link to that word but from an industry point of view there was nothing new interesting about that game other than the revenue. The same goes for games series like Uncharted, Killzone and even Mass Effect.

Coming from a household of gamers I remember vividly how we used to bemoan the drudgery and boredom that comes from essentially playing the same rehashed content time and time again. It’s why we avoided titles like the Madden series and pretty much every other sports game. We instead turned our undivided attentions (collectively, like a set of laser beams through a focus) to those experiences that were worth replaying because they had some dynamic component. However, two of my three brothers (both my seniors) were playing series like Metal Gear Solid, Grant Turismo, Driver, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Note how none of the games in these series innovated anything from their first release onwards. They all changed the landscape but then just redid the same thing with different narratives and cutscenes.

This is depressing. To see the release lists and articles on Wikipedia detailing “2011 in video gaming” with mostly sequels, prequels, reboots, rehashes and multi-media tie-ins makes me fear for the future of the medium as a whole. It makes me think that we’re already dead in the water, with our direction being wherever the financials, metrics and statistics take us.

There is a little light in the darkness though. As the biggest names in gaming are making their products easier to push and marginalize the actual experience we still have places like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and Rockethub for making truly deep experiences. But! We have to make it work. We, as gamers, have to actually get interested in what we’re doing, go out and help out those projects that need us the most. Sure, some of them will get picked up after their initial game by a big publisher who will make them produce sequel after sequel. Sure, crowdfunding is headed for becoming a premiere way for larger corporations to get free money. At least there’ll be some innovation there, some useful dialogue and critique of the medium at hand.

At least it’s ahead of the curve rather than trailing it, as most developers seem to be doing at the moment. Do your part, help an indie developer bring some gamer-centric originality to the medium again rather than the jaded, overdone, overanimated, overfunded crapfests that seem to be scheduled for 2013 and beyond.

I got into the Guild Wars 2 beta and it stirred something in me. You might think “me too!” but hold on there buster, I’m about to tell you something that isn’t heard that much around the web; I don’t like the game. I don’t like it at all. The game actually stirred in me a strong contempt for the genre it purports to be a part of – and it’s not. It says MMO on the box but I see none of the trademarks of the genre. Some tout this as the primary feature, that it’s not the same as its predecessors. I feel very strongly that it hasn’t learned as much from its supposed heritage as it should have. I would go so far as to say that the direction they’re taking isn’t an MMORPG, it’s merely an MMOG – and it irks me.

You see, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t implement anything to me that screams ‘compelling story’ or ‘involving narrative’. Instead it appears as a spectre of forum dalliance, showing off a lot of mechanics but no heart. Where Star Wars: The Old Republic is filled with heart but fails strongly on mechanics and presentation, Guild Wars does the old switcheroo and has a lot of mechanics in place of roleplaying elements. Sure, the roleplay community has taken its hardy attitude into the game and is determined to carve out  corner where they will have their story lines and other good times. However, they’re running off of their own steam and momentum, ArenaNet has done as much for them as Blizzard Entertainment has in World of Warcraft. With the exception that addons in the latter make it possible to have deep, meaningful RP whereas ArenaNet has no direct in-game support. That’s not my primary gripe with the game though, I’m not much of a roleplayer any more.

My gripe truly finds its focal point in the astonishingly lacklustre approach they’ve taken to PvE. The acronym in itself explains its purpose, Player versus Environment. I’m supposed to be fighting the environment but there’s really not much there in the way of innovation. Sure, they’ve eliminated the quest giver. That’s not progress, that’s mechanics. Quests are still there, except that you don’t have a natural obligation to go and complete them. Instead the game sort of pushes you to queue up for stuff to do away from the world (in instances) or abandon the fair folk of Tyria to fight your faction’s enemy – whomever that may be. The game’s focus obviously lies in PvP and that alone takes away a lot of the MMORPG genre I have come to love. Deep stories, countless tomes of lore and a progressing story line that affects my experience of the world are what make an MMORPG so much more than the single player games I put to the side once I became engrossed. Now, I feel there is a dangerous trend emerging amongst the Guild Wars 2 and Tera ranks of games. One of reducing substance and increasing mechanics to pander to those that can’t be bothered.

There is a bright side to this: if it keeps going we’ll go back to having developers make games for audiences considerably smaller to cater to those of us that still want a backbone to our gaming meat. They’ll develop games that are meant for 200-300,000 players and can maintain a healthy community of diverse players as a result. I suppose that’s where the real line is drawn between MMO gamers. Those that are there for the game and those that are there for the thing the game leads to. I sincerely hope that the former group sticks with games like Guild Wars 2 and leave my prospective story-driven MMOs alone. One can only dream.

inb4 “this game sucks cso pvp is unbalanced make like gw2 plx”

Single player DotA

I think this is a no-brainer. DotA (or MOBA or Action RTS) is fast becoming the premiere esport and has a huge following. I greatly enjoy watching matches of HoN, LoL and DotA2. Strikingly, not so much into the original DotA. Anyway, I picked up Demigod a while back when I was condemned to being without Internet access for a while after moving house and it has been something that’s stuck with me. Sure, the software came with that awful Stardock nonsense but the game held up wonderfully. Varied heroes, different playstyles and a variety of balanced maps with difficulty ratings that actually held some sway. A veteran DotA player will run through this stuff in no time and be bored but for us common folk I think this could work awesomely on those 4+ inch smartphones we’re all running around with these days.

Battle Chess

I know, right? The last time I played this, the word “jammies” was still being used to indicate my morning wear. Still, I’d love to see what a decent graphics engine and some strong indie development can do with something like this. Having seen what imaginative developers can do to something like tower defense, I have high hopes. Someone make this happen!

Turn-Based tactical shooters

Let’s not pretend that a bit of tactical shooting doesn’t excite you. Rogue Spear, those were the days man. Thing is, no one playing first person shooters has any patience any more. It’s been whittled away by all those colourful explosions and photorealism. Enter Shadow Watch. This is the kind of game that can interest anyone, anywhere. Put this on my phone and I’ll be draining that battery quicker than a hipster finding an app before his friends do.

Interactive novels

I have trouble reading. That’s not right. I have trouble spending dedicated time reading. You know, carving out a couple of hours every week to read in place of doing anything else. I find it hard because reading doesn’t innately engage me. I usually end up reading a couple of pages before my mind wanders, this is especially true when I know the universe (like Star Wars). As a result, games are far more able to capture my attention and therefore suck up more of my time. So I am relegated to reading on the train, two hours every day. The thing that would make me spend more time reading at home would be if I could interact with the novel a bit more. It doesn’t have to be non-linear, 3D or some sort of actual game. I would just like to see the artwork that usually accompanies large works to come alive as I flick through the pages of my book. E-paper is one of the coolest end-user electronics inventions I have seen in the last decade (if not longer). I feel that having a book’s pages be bordered with interactable lore objects and maybe some author’s notes would be great. It would definitely help keep my attention for longer.

There’s more stuff out there that deserves a good look. The big studios can pass this stuff up, I don’t expect them to go out on a limb and risk anything on any of these. But an indie guy or small studio could do well for itself taking their creative hammer to any of these.