We Place Faith in The Conduit
July 31st, 2008
I like to keep tabs on the Nintendo fanbase and their response to new games and announcements. I do so because it makes for a fascinating case study on how a loyal fanbase (such as Nintendo’s) reacts when their favourite company expands outwards to other audiences. The reality is that these players can enjoy games like Wii Fit and Brain Age (why wouldn’t they? I love them) yet haven’t made the transition into that frame of mind just yet, keeping hold of an arbitrary notion of thought (“hardcore gaming”). Their reaction is very insightful of fan culture and the identity it creates.
I myself am, of course, a huge Nintendo fan which makes up part of the fascination. You can even slap the commonly abused “fanboy” label on me too if you like. I’m not fussed. I think that the difference here is that, I’m very interested in casual games for both play and curious investigation. There’s no shame in it, contrary to popular belief, people like me can enjoy “casual” games and enjoy them because after all, they are games and I like to play games!
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Everything is Working in Perfect Harmony
June 3rd, 2008
I remember back a few years ago I read an article which talked about Hollywoodisation of the video games industry. The core idea was that as game development budgets rose across all platforms the quality of games would level out and more developers would take less risks in order to survive. This would in turn force developers to create more safe bets breeding a multitude of generic, samey games. Essentially this article forcasted the death for the video game industry.
At the time it definitely sounded realistic. I mean from where we sat we all knew that the cost of development would rise and that it would change the way that the industry operates. Looking at this theory now though it’s clear to see that no such thing exists. On second thoughts its not hard to argue that games are infact less like this now than before.
Balance and What Makes Balance
The idea of Hollywoodisation is very one dimensional, it had no choice but to be that way because back then we could have never predicted how games would evolve into what they are now. With the coming of the latest generation of games we have seen new outlets open up providing users with more selection rather than the idea of the one size fits all format that we have been walking for sometime. These many new evolutions have ensured that we are currently more balanced than ever in turn lowering the burden that Hollywoodisation has on our industry. Lets look at some of these avenues that have helped out industry evolve so much in such a short amount of time.
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Tags: casual gaming, ds, Hollywoodisation, mobile phone, playstation 2, wii
A Couple of Useful User Contributions
May 10th, 2008
I was fortunate enough to have two of my posts featured on RacketBoy’s Retro Roundup and as a result I have had a couple of great suggestions put forward to me by some of his readers checking out the site. They are both in relation to the Nintendo Wii Classic Controller Alternatives article. These contributions round off the complete list of Classic Controller alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »
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