Culture Clash

(July 2005)

Eyes Wide Shut

The month before last, almost as an aside, I said that “games are devolving.” This remark was not well-received.

“What do you mean by ‘devolving'?” asked one developer.

I mean they're getting worse.

“HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?????” wrote another reader of uncertain grammatical capability.

How can I not? Compare X-Com to UFO: Aftermath. Or DOOM to DOOM 3. Arena is an unforgettable roleplaying time-thief; Dungeon Lords would be a better game if it came with a savage beating in every box . Xenosaga, awash in mythology containing influences ranging from opera to Jung to General Relativity, nonetheless lacks the crystalline elegance of Phantasy Star. How much of today's output will shimmer in our memories the way Wing Commander, Populous, Metroid, Castlevania , or any of a thousand other Precambrian games do?

They didn't have super-accelerated graphics or realistic physics, so they had to be fun instead. A share of modern games are good, but few are great, and it's because publishers and developers alike seem to have forgotten what makes them great. It's been ages since we've seen something genuinely special – not just stunning or visually spectacular, not some random technical achievement, but something breathtaking, one of those if-this-game-was-a-person-I'd-marry-it kinds of games. The last that did it to me was Dungeon Keeper 2.

There's no doubt that sepia-toned nostalgia influences this. Though the Silver and Golden Ages of gaming got those metals for a reason, both periods also saw their share of forgettable games – just as every movie from the 1950s isn't a classic. It's conceivably unsurprising that years later we might look back on even a Bioforge or Robinson's Requiem with dewy-eyed fondness. It's also conceivable that in 2013 we'll do the same with today's games. But the rosy glasses of memory aren't enough to explain away the quality delta.

What does explain it is the modern attitude of studios and publishers: that they know better than gamers what gamers will like; indeed, that gamers should sit down and shut up and play what's given them, keep their opinions to themselves and leave development to the pros. This is ironic, because many people in the business freely admit that they don't really play games any more. Modern games are in many ways an insult to the player's intelligence. We all figured out knotty, intricate games like Autoduel and Sacrifice. The claim that “innovative games don't sell” is invalid, because innovation has nothing to do with it. Good games, properly marketed, sell. Bad games are still bad, whether they sell or not. Economics are important, but there's still something to be said for having a modicum of respect for your craft.

Recently I've been playing a wonderful independent game called Mount & Blade. Every professional developer should download the demo and play it. It's what games used to be like before they became predictable and unexciting, lost in a creative doldrums that's gone on since 1999. When I'm not playing that, I'm lurking my way through the City's alleyways in the best Thief since Thief – an expansion that shows greater stability and finer production values than any of a dozen studio games I've played this year.

When an $11 indie game made by two people has a better melee combat model than Morrowind and gobbles time more effectively than Rome: Total War, studio developers would do well to take notice. When a low-budget, fan-made expansion using last century's technology shames the already-mediocre Deadly Shadows into remote second fiddleism, the message is that it's easier to let people enjoy a good game than convince them to enjoy a bad one. Studio games have become the equivalent of dormitory cafeteria fare: safe, dubiously nutritious and ultimately bland. Similar claims were made, and ignored, in pre-crash 1983.

So far the rise in excellence of forward-thinking independents has been met with a typically boorish response from the pros. Rather than make games as good as Alien Hominid, they just bought Alien Hominid and then went back to boxing mediocrity, learning nothing from it. The mainstream development engine's misguided conviction that what they produce is what gamers want will soon backfire dramatically. Changes in the makeup of the “gaming public” have resulted in the abandonment of serious hobbyists and misjudgment of consumer desire on the part of an industry that has lost all sight of what its product should be.

There is a tantalizing glitter of hope that some studios recognize this issue and are making efforts to clamber out of the mire. STALKER (if done right, which I seriously doubt it will be), Spore, Oblivion and Alan Wake all have potential. But the dark spots still dramatically outnumber the bright ones. The design doc for Origin of the Species is likely one line (“let's make a game about a girl whose panties are showing”); Stolen held my attention for exactly six minutes. The avalanche of GTA clones threatens to bury us all. Pariah was supposed to be this big emotional rollercoaster and came off instead as insipid and trite. Same goes for Advent Rising, Project: Snowblind and countless others.

When the first Harry Potter novel was published in the U.S., some idiot decided that Americans were too stupid to know what a “Philosopher's Stone” was and changed the title. This insult is not dissimilar to the belief on the part of mainstream publishers and developers that gamers won't “get” or “like” unusual games like Psychonauts. The truth is we would, and do, if given the chance. And before the deluge of mail arrives pointing out that Halo 2 sold better than Katamari Damacy , please remember that an overmarketed bad game is always going to sell better than an undermarketed good one. It's not that gamers aren't interested in quality or innovation, it's that most gamers never even get to hear about the games that have it. And that may be the key difference between the amber glow of then and the bleak gray of now.