As our tenth anniversary continues, we decided it’d be a good chance to take a look back at the first few months of Virtual Bastion and compare some of our thoughts then with those we hold now. Have we changed over these past few years, or have our opinions solidified? To answer that question in my case, I took a look at a post called “The ‘Triple A’ Fun Factor.” It’s likely not something I’d write today, but perhaps that’s only because the views expressed here are less strong than those I hold now.
In the post, I bascially talk about how the big budget triple A games are meant to be “experiences” rather than things that are fun to play. I talked about how all the marketing and developer diaries and pre-launch talk was all about things like graphics, story, characters and the world rather than the gameplay and what was actually fun about the game. It was a trend I noticed back then, one that has, in some ways, continued and become further cemented while grinding to a sudden halt in others.
Publisher and developers in the modern triple A space still spend a lot of time talking about stories and such, and they still keep trying to hype graphics as though we’re still in the SD to HD transitional days. They’ve put out game after game where the entire focus is on character, narrative and visual fidelity, notable examples being Death Stranding and The Last of Us: Part II, and while again I recognize that those games have their place, well, they’re not exactly “fun” now are they?
On the other end, we as gamers have seen many large publishers and studios all but stop caring about making something fun and instead try to craft “experiences” that are as flashy and (more importantly) addictive as possible. They don’t seem to care how many of these games fail either, because all they need is their own Apex Legends or Fortnite and they can get an infinite money fountain of their very own. In short, outside of a small handful of exceptions each year, there really isn’t any fun factor to triple-A games anymore.
So, have my views changed over these past ten years? Yes and no. I still think more or less along the same lines as I used to, it’s just that experience has further entrenched my views on gaming. I’m no longer interested in giving the beneffit of the doubt to triple-A productions; I gotta have a real good reason to spend money on them now. No more buying on faith or developer reputation and no more just accepting an “experience.” I play games to have fun, and most big budget games are just not made to be fun anymore.
Perhaps I’m allowing myself to become a grouchy old schooler, but what can I say? I like fun, and indie is mostly where fun lives in the modern games industry. What about you though? How have your views on gaming changed over the past decade? What do you think about all this? Let me know bleow!
Image by Flickr user: Ryan Somma (cc)
VIRTUAL BASTION 