That article has to be the single most perspective-lacking piece of work cracked has ever put out. Here's why:
First off, complaining about aiming down sights? next he'll be complaining about having to swing a sword or having to steer in order to get left/right. Bloody stupid if you ask me.
1. The prospect of motion controls (and recent advances in 3D technology) is complete immersion where there is no intermediary between the player and the game. Now, while we may not be there yet with the current technology, one has to start somewhere and having the big three companies actively trying to achieve this is probably the only way to reach this point. Its all trial and error, so faulting them for not perfecting a relatively new technology right off the bat is silly. But again, consoles having a gimmick is nothing new.
2. DRM was once heralded by the industry as a possible solution to the piracy problem, which it wasn't, so it failed. Companies now a days are starting to realize this and have admitted their folly, with many companies dropping these draconian measures due to it being a financial sink-hole. But what music? piracy was a big problem and was about to ruin it, so now our entire music catalog is digital and has to be connected to a server to play. Oh wait, no it didn't, iTunes and other services gave consumers the convenience of buying online and now the music industry was saved. And the same thing will happen with services like Steam.
Excerpt said:
As I explained in detail here, instead of making games that explore new worlds and experiences, design becomes all about addiction and repetition.
3. Oh yes, for who cannot remember the entire GALAXIES that we explored in classic such as Pac-man, Asteroids and Super Mario brothers? now a days all games try to pad out the length by making the game kill you countless of times forcing you to replay the same part over and over.
Oh wait that's bullshit. Its statements like these in the article that make me suspect that this is just a brilliant piece of satire. For can anyone really say that games such as Zelda (the first one, to take an example) compare to recent open-world RPGs in terms of exploring worlds? most older games relied on repetition to pad out the hours of gameplay while recent games such as the Witcher/Dragon Age/Mass Effect/Elder Scrolls can give you hundreds of hours of gameplay. He only looked at the social-gaming market and the most popular MMO's and painted the ENTIRE fucking industry (whether its triple A or indie) with one broad stroke.
And DLC? i refer you to the
this excellent video on how things such as DLC has existed for a long time and were much more terrible than they are now.
4. Creative Bankruptcy. Ugh, yes... for when all the Doom/Quake/UT/CS clones were being made, creativity was at its peak. Not to mention Megaman 1-9, a simple pallet swap and sprite change? if that's not creative then i don't know what is.
Sarcasm aside, clones and sequels and spin-offs have existed since before Jesus Christ[footnote]http://www.cracked.com/article_19153_5-trends-you-think-are-ruining-movies-are-older-than-film.html[/footnote] and hell, some of the examples he mentioned were actually great games that have changed a lot with each installment.
Plus comparing two games (realistic military FPS's) where you play some special-ops guys and saying "OMG THEY BOTH WEAR MILITARISTIC UNIFORMS!" is nothing short of stupid. It would be like faulting flight-sims for all featuring planes or jet fighters.
5. No real vision for the future? when has that been an "ominous" trend? when has ANYONE had an 100% accurate vision for the future? this whole point is so irrelevant that its not worth complaining about.
6. Okay this is ridiculous, how the fuck is the definition of games some LOOOOOOMING threat to the industry? it seems like the writer didn't have anything to fill in the last two points so he made some shit up that has no relevance to the main point at hand and represents
no danger to the industry of the medium.
