Recent conversations on our blog, with my friends, in the gaming community, and generally spread throughout my daily life, have lead me to start thinking about what my personal “demands” for the future of gaming are. I put demands in intentional scare quotes- obviously I’m not really in a position to demand that anyone do anything, other than by supporting things with my wallet and my attention. Nonetheless, thinking about the changes I’d like to see in gaming has been a useful activity for me. So here they are:
From the community: Let’s just let the whole “fake geek/gamer” thing die. Seriously. If someone says to you “I’m a gamer”, let’s just take them at their word on that. They may not play the games you like, or they may not play them as much as you, but another person’s expression of their own enjoyment of the media does not take away from your enjoyment. Part and parcel of this, let’s not vilify either casual or hardcore. People have different playstyles. Whatevs. You certainly don’t have to play with people if you don’t think they can keep up, but that doesn’t make them a “worse” gamer. That just makes them a different kind of gamer.
Could we also let the PC/console thing die? Do we really need more arbitrary ways to cut each other down?
Further, let’s try to be nicer to each other in general. As Sam posted here, let’s try to come together more as a community, and at the very least stop hurling insults at each other. I make this blanket statement, because there have been insults thrown in every possible direction, and I think we would all do better if we would take a deep breath and not make personal attacks. Civil disagreement is useful, and helps us all think about our own positions and beliefs. Personal attacks lead to hurt feelings, anger, and increasing division. Let’s have the former and cut the later as much as possible.
From the games: I’d love to see more roles and more positive representations of a diverse number of protagonists and NPCs. I think we’ve already made some good strides in this direction, but I’d love to see more. This is all over the indie scene (Sunless Sea, which I reviewed here, is a great example), but it’d be nice to see it from the AAA crowd. Really, this is just asking for more creativity- tell a new story! In a space of infinite possibility, I’m still a bit confused as to why every fantasy game seems to take place in the English countryside…
Finally, I’d love it if we actually put some clothes on our female games characters, at least when it makes sense. I’m not saying we can never have scantily-clad characters; I’d just like to see more situationally appropriate clothing. This is really a small gripe in the scope of the other things I’ve mentioned, but the plate bikini is a thing that needs to go away. This is really part of the above comment; if we’re creating more interesting and complex roles for our female PC/NPCs, perhaps we can also envision a game space where they don’t all feel the need to wear the least amount of clothing possible. Heck, it would even help create stronger emphasis on when characters were actually intentionally flaunting their sexuality if it weren’t every character out there doing it.
So, that’s my list of “demands”. What would you put on your personal list? Where would you like to see the future of gaming go?
3 thoughts on “My “demands””
My “Demands”! *slams paper on table*
– The return of gameplay focused development in the triple and double-A field. I’ve seen a rise of narrative centric games that trade gameplay for cutscenes and it’s just lazy and/or lack of skill. That people didn’t see what was wrong with DmC in comparison to the original series, or value resolution over framerate, is a symptom of this. I’m big on gameplay mechanics and balance.
– All games will now have accompanying demos/trials before or during release. If the studio provided a beta they don’t have to create a demo/trial build.
– End of review number/letter grades. Write your review and let the strength of your tone make the point. This will also have the side effect of gamers learning to understand other perspectives.
– The return of 4plyr splitscreen where applicable. Splatoon doesn’t have 4plyr splitscreen. And because nobody seems to care about the actual gameplay experience anymore; Nintendo isn’t getting enough flak about it. Had the squid-girls been in bikinis or smoking weed 23 articles would be written. Where’s the heat on companies for abandoning couch play?
– All shooters will now offer Full Game, Campaign Only, and MP Only packages. The Campaign/MP packages would be half price. This way, studios will learn what they should spent their money on, when MP completely blows the other packages out of the water in terms of sales. Battlefield having a campaign is a waste of production money, this sales system would show them why.
– No more silliness like ‘Girls Only side tournies’ at big events. It’s embarrassing and sexists. There’s a reason for some segregation in sports, but gaming prides itself on being something anybody can do. To be honest this isn’t that common, but any league that attempts this again should get flak. The Flak of Justice.
– The end of the Kinect. I don’t think this will objectively improve gaming or the community I just find it utterly useless.
– Community policing. We don’t put enough of each other on blast for saying stupid, hateful, sensational rhetoric. If there’s one thing I learned in the last month it’s that a community self policing is not only possible; but extremely helpful. We should have been about that a LONG time ago.
– I demand game journalists who are gamers who write, rather than writers who happen to play games. I really hate having to go in the comment section and explain how/why something works to the writer, or what he/she didn’t understand about a certain mechanic. And that’s if they even talk mechanics in depth. And at the very least, make sure whoever’s previewing a build or reviewing a game knows a thing or two about that game’s genre beyond “Yeah I played it a few times”. If I see another article prefaced with “I rarely got into ________ and don’t like the genre….” I’m gonna flip. And if the response to this demand is you don’t have particularly versed writers, I then demand you hire more diverse writers.
– I demand (and challenge) American indy developers to create games at least as good as games seen in the 16bit and 32/64bit eras. Our indies are skipping that golden age of game mechanics revolution and diving into the current narrative ‘my feels’ era. It would behoove them to follow along the track of gaming history. We have dev tools the studios of the past WISH they had, there’s no excuse – aside from being poor game designers.
– I demand an end to people pretending to demo games on stage at E3. We know you’re not playing. It’s insulting. Stop it.
If these demands are not met, I will make more demands including the demand that they be met.
I like your list of demands a lot, Jean. I like narrative-centric games quite a bit, but I want my narratives to be developed with the game play in mind, not instead of game play. If all the cool stuff happens in cut scenes, I’m really just killing time between when the movie is on. I can do that outside of gaming.
I also really like getting rid of the Kinect. I suppose Dance Central is a fun enough party game, but that’s no reason to try to force it on/in everything. Have the peripheral for games where it makes sense, and leave it out where it doesn’t. I didn’t use my Rock Band guitar to play God of War, and I don’t want to have to flail my arms about or yell at the screen to play games.
Thanks. If only I ruled this planet.