The Video Game Industry: More About Money or Art?

To start, I would like to mention the fairly recent news that video
games have been officially recognized as art by The Museum of Modern
Art. Obviously this is no news to the gaming community or anyone who
already has an understanding of what art truly is but it is a bit
reassuring that the rest of the world is starting to recognize the true
art behind video games. Anyway, onto today's topic.

So this is a topic I've briefly covered during some of my nerd rants
against Call of Duty among other things, but it is apparent that this
topic is a much more broad one than I originally realized. That topic
being whether video games nowadays are being made just to make the
developers or publishers money or if the developers are truly driving
towards the creation of works of art that video games have the potential
to be. The main examples I will use this time around are Infinity Ward
and Treyarch specifically, Microsoft, Sony, Bethesda, and Ubisoft.



Let's start with Microsoft vs Sony. Now if you have read some of my
previous articles you may know that I am an Xbox gamer. However, this
does not stop me from seeing Microsoft as the shitty, money hungry
publisher that it is. Let's be honest here. Nearly everything Microsoft
publishes or features on the marketplace besides their main money makers
(Halo, GoW, and Fable back in the day) are mostly blown off by
Microsoft themselves. An excellent example of this is Super Meat Boy. I
recently watched a documentary called Indie Game, which gave a lot of
insight into what Indie developers go through to make their game, Super
Meat Boy and Fez in particular. Anyway, The day of Super Meat Boy's
release it was supposed to be featured on the Xbox Dashboard. However,
on that day, Microsoft didn't feature the game until six hours after it
was supposed to appear. Aside from that there is the brutally obvious
fact that they just want to make money off of the fact that they have
the best online connectivity on the console market. While I love the
connectivity that Xbox Live offers, far better than the PSN, I often
find myself wondering if it is worth the twenty-five dollars every few
months that I pay. Sony on the other hand, while it does not have the
best connectivity, would rather focus on simply offering players the
ability to connect with each other for free. In other words, Microsoft
is money hungry, and are just lucky enough to have great developers to
back their asses up, while Sony is mostly about the developers'
creations.



Next Let's talk about Call of Duty, but this time the rivalry within
the franchise. Infinity Ward vs Treyarch. This is quite a good question.
In my opinion the winner is Treyarch. Why? The main reason is I see
them at least attempting to sell us a different game a lot more that
Infinity ward. Look at the differences. Every Infinity Ward game since
COD4 has been further into the very same time period. What about
Treyarch? They went from WWII to the Cold War and then to the Future.
They also tried something new with the new create a class system in
Black Ops 2. All of that said, they still have yet to use a different
engine for the game or change the gameplay up apart from the new create a
class system. It's still just run and shoot. The point here, is
Treyarch seems to be more about the art of game development in my eyes
whereas Infinity Ward is more focused on the money that they are making
by selling the same crap year after year.

Now on to Bethesda and Ubisoft. This is really not about one vs the
other but rather a nice clean comparison. Both are developers and
publishers. Personally, I find the games that both of them make to be
true works of art. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Assassin's Creed are all
games that have made it on my personal top ten. I have yet to play any
Far Cry games but am excited for Far Cry 3 and Watchdogs looks amazing.
The difference here though, is clear. Ubisoft, first of all, makes way
more games than most developers can wrap their brain around. But they
also publish games, most of which aren't that bad, but their best at
developing in my opinion. Then There's Bethesda. They are more focused
on making larger games rather than a bunch of them, so basically
Bethesda and Ubisoft are balanced as far as the development comparison
goes. But Bethesda's weak spot up until the release of Dishonored was,
publishing. Brink and Rage were two games that were published by
Bethesda and though they got a lot of hype and even awards and good
reviews, turned out to be hated among the gaming community. Those two
games alone made Bethesda infamous as a publisher of bad games. Bethesda
is not, however, money hungry, nor is Ubisoft. They are smart.
Bethesda, did not always have the publishing rights to Rage, EA had the
rights before them, and Bethesda wasn't wrong necessarily in publishing
Rage, though the game was a disappointment. Ubisoft may have too many
games up their sleeves but, they are actually good games rather than
psychologically addictive crap. The main point is, these two companies,
have one thing on their minds and that is good games.

What it really boils down to is, one question: are the games good, or
do they appear to be good. A game can be more addictive than another
but can still lack true values that make a game great. It is also up to
the gamer and their preferences but in the end there will always be a
difference between simply running and shooting being the premise of one
game, and running, shooting, driving, communicating, and collaborating
being the premise behind another game. Similar concept with a single
player scenario. It is always up to the player to choose their path but
ultimately there will always be one that is crafted much better than the
other, and if a game seems addicting rather than immersing or
satisfying, chances are you've contributed to a bad game empire.

That's it for today. Since my Halo 4 Review got more attention than I
thought it would, I plan to write some reviews in the future for games
like, Assassin's Creed III, Far Cry 3, Transformers: FOC, Dishonored,
Skyrim: Dragonborn, and I may even do a review on the Scuf Animal
Controller, for those of you looking to improve your gameplay and
whatnot. Also, I haven't made a game in a very long time. I've used Game
Maker 7, MyGameBuilder and I've tried Unity. Problem is for the newer
versions of Game Maker and for Unity 3 you need to know how to program
which I couldn't learn to do if I tried. Like I said I haven't made a
game in a long time, and I have been itching to start up again and
hopefully get into making my games public, rather than just something
for me and my friends to mess around with. I am probably far off from
accomplishing this any time soon but I have plenty of creative ideas and
am only in need of some refined practice and a programmer. Like I said
this is probably not going to happen for a very long time but if anyone
would be interested in working with me on a game somehow in the near or
far future, let me know. Until then...

Halo 4 Life December 11, 2012 by aardvark09j