God, it's been a while. Have you missed my Cynical Nature? My friends would tell you that I can be quite the Cynical Bastard, but in recent history I've moved to a new state and my Cynical Nature has been placed on the back burner as real issues consume my life. Life is good and all, and while I've been furloughed for four days I still have a job and that's fantastic.
Lucky for those of you that enjoy my Cynical Nature, I am writing this article. I mean there's
plenty of things to be cynical about if you're American. For the sake of this article I'll keep it to limited to gaming. Let's jump into a few of those topics, after all it's been a while and some things have certainly happened.
Let's start with the
subject of my last article, Mr. Luc Bernard. See, he had this game known as Eternity's Child, and on paper it looked really good. It excited me, it really did. Unfortunately, what's good on paper doesn't always turn out great, and apparently Eternity's Child just was not good. If you
trust Destructoid's review it's God awful, and that's just sad really. Such high expectations dashed by the general panning of this game by reviewers. So how did Luc take it? Like a baby! He said he would never develop games again, and the world shed a single tear.
So, flash forward to today and what's happening? Why, Luc Bernard is
developing games! Why, Luc, you pretentious ass! You make such a damn scene out of everything, make everyone hate you, and in the process of doing so we all know your name now that you are developing legitimate games. Your story inclines me to believe that you planned this crap out all along. You sir, are a marketing genius, or incredibly stupid. Here's to you, Mr. Bernard. You might have pissed off half the gaming world, but at least we all know who you are.
Moving on, I recently bought a PlayStation 3, and it's fantastic. While the Wii isn't the shovelware console that it's sometime depicted to be, the fact still remains that it's quite obvious that the casual gamer is Nintendo's Priority. I've come to terms with that, and that is why I own a George Foreman Grill. But, fortunately for you, Nintendo, while you don't seem to care much about the core gamers right now, some of your third party developers do. God, Mad World and The Conduit will be fantastic. I'm not a violent person, but Mad World and it's violence will be amazing.
While the third party developers have a few gems, I still have to wonder where the hell Nintendo is with their AAA titles. Animal Crossing was for the "core gamer"? I call bullshit. You're a smart company, Nintendo, and you know how to maximize profit. And profit maximization is simple with the Wii! All you need to do is cater to the "casual" gamer. There are a lot more of them than there are of us, and well, Nintendo's Advertising crew knows how to make the Wii and Nintendo's games seem absolutely necessary. Thing is though that they aren't! Super Smash Bros Brawl felt eerily like Melee, except with a nerfed Ness. Bastards. Animal Crossing was the same Animal Crossing released on the other consoles. Let's face it, you're not releasing games to satisfy the true gamers any more, rather, you're placating them. It's sort of sad, but you got to do what makes the investors happy. I understand.
Cynicism doesn't just mean having a general disdain for other people, but also being overly pessimistic about things. Well, for the gaming industry, the economy and its effects on the industry have caused me to be pessimistic about the future. I don't think Sony will ever return to being number one in the market. Sony took a gamble by releasing an expensive console years ahead of its time, and the economy decided to collapse around them, making their console out of the reach of consumers even at a price point lower than what it launched for. Developers are falling left and right. Factor 5 and Free Radical both are gone. EA is laying off 1000 or so people. Midway is bankrupt. Surely this is a bad time for a lot of companies, and the gaming industry is not immune from the economic fallout.
What does the future hold for the industry? I think you're going to see more game companies fall over the course of this year. Companies will probably try to maximize efficiency, which means layoffs are impending for those that stay open. Got to survive with lower profit margins, and a lot of companies will need to do that. This is 2009. We're in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Companies are finding that a few companies are selling most of the games, leaving a small piece of the pie for the rest of the developers. Can this small piece of the pie support the large number of developers during the recession? Probably not.
Well, I apologize for the long, long hiatus on Cynical Gamer articles. It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, it's a new year, so hopefully new articles from your neighborhood friendly Cynical Gamer. Of course, your neighborhood friendly Cynical Gamer also happens to code the PHP pages on this website, write for this website, and act the Site Director of this website; so who knows when the next time you'll see the Cynical Gamer actually will be. So, until next time!
