Poll: Games : Prefer Fame or Cult?

[Jackpot]

With publishers like EA, swamping the market with lowest grade plutonium, and making it easy to fill the general consumers homes with collections of consoles and games like FIFA, Madden, Need For speed Underground, etc, our once underground hobby of manipulating non existant worlds has now become a worldwide force.

But is it about to start eating itself, as the community grows, and people are looking into games to start printing money, and only using it as a financial force? Is the value of play , wonder and exploration being lost to cookie cutter things being in demand by more people, who don't necceseraly care about what is fun, but instead, what is cute, or violent? People who have no appriciation for the storytelling or intergration possibility?

People who would mock us years ago for our hobby, now partially amongst our midst?

Or is this a good thing? That someone, somewhere can now claim that their sole job is "Game designer". That what they do for a living, is to be a part of a team, that at the end of the project have made a game, and are being paid for it. That, instead of taking one guy furiously working home after coming back from flipping burgers to make a small game, that we can have dedicated teams of people be part of a huige industry that can get careers doing this, and live comfortably?

 

[Dogeman5]

I dunno but I love Suda51 so for me: cult

 

[Logan Westbrook]

I think that there is space for both. Video games are like movies, there are good ones and bad ones. Not every popular game will automatically be dreadful, just like not every box office smash will be terrible.

 

[sammyfreak]

Fame! Definately. I want the good, creative and original games to become massively popular. This would encourage developers to become better and develop the industry more.

 

[boc407]

I think if games move more towards the main stream there will still always be the quality titles you would expect if it was more of a cult market. However it will also be a bigger industry with a larger selection of talented people working there. This way you will find more quality games among the rest.

 

[Portoparty]

I would go with cult.
I'm tired of people telling me that the most mainstream games are the best and that simple, fun, indie games like Audiosurf and Crayon physics are stupid because their fanbase is small, though I dont want to sound cold and unfeeling, I would absolutely love it if live-tards were never attracted to gaming with Halo and GOW. the worst is hearing how my Wii "suxorz bcause it has no shootrz rates M...zorz" just because they are all the rage right now. I'm goddamn happy with great looking titles like Boomblox. but wait... I think I'm getting off topic.

the ideal fanbase for me is large enough to attract other developers to learn from the design and incorporate it/get a sequel but small enough that other developers are not flocking to remake it.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Games that want to (and can take the [] for that matter) fire from Mainstream Media can go right ahead. Frankly I think cult is the way to go.

 

[thejoblot]

Cult, I guess. I usually find most cult games a lot more interesting than other mainstream fare.

 

[Strafe Mcgee]

Depends on the game. And it also depends on your definition of cult. Are Ikaruga and Rez still cult since they became available on live marketplace? I don't care which definition the game fits in to, as long as it's good. Uplink, Audiosurf, Ikaruga, Rez/Gears Of War, Orange Box, Bioshock, Oblivion. All are great games (depending on your opinion) and there's room in the market for all of them.

I'm going to vote cult though, since that's where the majority of the originality and interest lies in gaming.

 

[Natural Hazard]

due to the fact that games are made to make money, i'd rather they be famous selling them to the piles of hopeless people, so the company makes money, whats wrong with wanting a decent game to sell pretty well?

 

[Meshakhad_v1legacy]

I'm going to go with fame. Yes, there will be games made solely for money, just like films, but games do not lend themselves for mass production, unlike films. Games do lend themselves to being created by people who want to make an awesome game. Besides, the success of Half-Life shows that a game developer smaller than most high schools can still do well. Also, the more mainstream games are, the less flak they'll recieve from the media.

 

[Easykill]

More games = More good games. Even if we do have to sift through the shit a bit.

 

[John Galt]

Going mainstream won't eliminate quality from games. Sure there will be legions of fans lapping up every ET that's on a shelf but the makers of great games will still exist. It just might be harder to hear them among the roar of people waiting in line for Halo 4.

 

[Spinwhiz]

I'd have to go with Cult, because there are a lot of indi publishers that have amazing games but just don't have the funding to publish like EA does. Those are the real guys who develop. When is the last time you've seen something completely original from a big publisher? I can count 3 in recent history: Portal, BioShock and Mass Effect. Most big developers just take their games, slap a sequel sticker on it and sells it off because it's safe. I don't blame them, but the creativity is usually pretty low.