Everything Used To Be Better - Not For Videogames

(Alert: this isn't a post, it's a novel!)

In the last couple of months when I hit the stores for new games, I had tough choices to make. Familiar titles like Metroid, Rygar, Shinobi, Super Mario, Contra, or Zelda sucked me into a warp zone to the past. Dark screen, "welcome, you enter the 80's." I had warm flashbacks of my first Zelda and Metroid experiences, and remembered the good old game ads in which kids were nicely dressed with clean haircuts instead of wearing cool sunglasses showing you the finger. Two boys, maybe 14 years old, brought me back to reality when they had a dispute which game to buy. "Not Super Mario, it's so cheesy." Are these kids spoiled? In 1990 I almost stood in line for a Super Mario 3! Then I remembered that the new Super Mario Sunshine wasn't my first priority either. What happened? Didn't everything used to be better and easier in the good old 8- bit times, from gameplay to less confusion which games to buy?

Was indeed everything better in a more innocent era of videogames? I'm afraid not. In hardly any other branche of the entertainment industry can we observe such a fast development - incredible graphics and bombastic sound add to gameplay than never before, and more than 30 years of experience in game-developing have dramatically increased the overall quality of games. When it comes to play lenght, control, graphics, sound and difficulty level, there are hardly any real stinkers offered; and this wasn't the case in the good old 8-bit times in which lots of games were clearly below average and had such bad control that they were hardly playable despite their arcade origins. The days are over in which two guys in a basement could develop with lots of hard work in a couple of months a game. It was sometimes innovative, but more often than not amateurish, just slightly out of target towards the audience, and more often than not just plain bad. Money played always a big role, but much less so than nowadays, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

What we observe in the videogame industry is a degree of professionalism which was hardly foreseeable 15 years ago. The mass appeal of games and the prospect of big profits which rival in the meantime the movie industry professionalized the game industry in every aspect, from marketing research, recruiting game developers, costs for game development, and the distribution of games. Increased marketing research means that we players are offered to play what we want. Professional organized input of gamers means that mistakes of gameplay are less often repeated and the quality level increased over time. Defeating "Goldman" in "Dragon Warrior" over and over and over again wasn't as much fun as playing the smooth and involving story of Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy 2 was already an improvement over Final Fantasy 1 in this regard.

And there are the top hits with several millions of development costs which can make or break entire software development firms. Not necessarily bad if you think about that the quality testing for these games are better than ever before they hit the market because a lot of money is at risk. Money doesn't rule over quality today, quality IS money in a fierce competitive market.

The often heard argument that the golden age or ages of videogames were more innovative doesn't hold true either. We observe a game industry which tests in an exciting way the limits of game content because the socio-demographics of players (except for gender) changed dramatically in the last ten years. Experimentation with new play concepts and graphics in almost every genre produced a lineup of high quality games which the industry never experienced before; Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy X, Gran Turismo 3, Xenosaga, XIII, Viewtiful Joe, Jak and Dexter 2 are the search for new concepts to breathe new air into old genres. My lamentation about too many choices of games and worries if my ever beloved Nintendo will survive is the result of increased competition from which we all profit. Nintendo was never forced to release a new Metroid, Zelda and Super Mario within SIX months - clearly the result of the fierce competition with Sony and Microsoft. Yes, I don't know what to buy anymore, but I won't complain about it when I look at my stack of first-rate games I haven't played yet or games I still have to buy - Rygar, Shinobi, Xenosaga, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Suikoden 3, Medal of Honor Frontline, Morrowind, Dark Cloud 2, StarFox Adventures...and the list goes on and on. In every genre we are spoiled in the meantime with quality games and complain about phenomena which are as old as the game industry with the only difference that they exist nowadays to a lesser degree; clone games, copycats, lack of innovation, premature releases, quirks in gameplay, and about the ever-so-familiar beating a once successful game concept to death.

More innocence and naivite of the games and the industry are appealing and heart-warming in retrospect, but it also meant less professionalism with all it's negative aspects. My uneasiness with a changed industry is clearly a product of increased professionalism and competition which in the end is good for game players because we have more choices of games and better games to play. Baseball in the 30s was less professionalized, and truly Babe Ruth was an exceptional player; although business aspects play more than ever a role in baseball, the overall quality of the sports went up. Same goes for videogames.

No, not everything used to be better, at least when it comes to videogames.