More categories for this article than I thought possible... it's about everything.
Leigh Alexander is very much worth reading, when you're in search of thoughts on the game industry. Two recent articles are the case For and the case Against this new world of entertainment media convergence. Is this intertwining of games, web, movies, television, cell phones, GPS, fresh baked bread, and the fat pipe connecting your checking account to media producers' coffers, is this good for games?
Leigh gives the definitive maybe. I mostly agree.
Games are in a funny place: Ms Alexander accuses the games industry of being an "adolescent", instead of the more typical "infant", when describing Where We Are Now. Sure, why not: games have come a long way since Space Invaders. The main trouble facing the industry is not with toy tie-ins, it's not with mainstream criticism, it's simply that all games today simply lead us down the garden path. Talking about where convergence takes us sidesteps the issue of where games themselves can currently take us. The answer is "not as far as we think they should".
Fantastic art direction and high-polygon models, with sophisticated shaders, all combine to make players believe in worlds enough that world limitations are called out with all the clamor of sirens and flashing lights. With the customer base of "people with computers and/or a game console" always expanding, the wide variety of hardware and software systems to target gets ever more unwieldy, and the complications involved in delivering a good coherent experience to everyone increases drastically. And the cost of asset creation for these ever more sophisticated games has gotten more expensive with new tech, not less expensive. Games are, already, running the wrong way on the treadmill to creating the Metaverse.
I'm not addressing the essential problem on convergence directly, if only because it's not going to be the primary driver of any but a very few games. Games are the one media entertainment experience that is essentially zero percent passive, while all others approach 100% passive consumption. OK, American Idol has you phoning in your choice for Corporate Lounge Singer of the Year, I'm still calling it at 98% passive consumption of execrable music. It's this dichotomy that will always stymie the attempts to make strong marriages between Games and NotGames.
Convergence will bring more advertising-fueled web games, and more awkward attempts at synergy, but the fact remains that with games of any depth or length, the audience has not grown astonishingly quickly. Include Solitaire and MineSweeper, and you get what looks like a tsunami of new casual gamers. But not really: they're not folks you can base an industry on. And it takes industrial-scale development to make the AAA games that do things like play on consoles.
Not that the conversation isn't worthwhile or interesting, but it's a little early in the process. Just like five years ago, when every game was going to be an MMO, the craze passed, and games still got made for the gaming audiences that are still here.
