For years the PC gaming industry has been morosely prophesied to be going under, sinking, no longer buoyant. Never mind the continued releases of new games and the recent barrage of sequels that seems to have breathed new life into the industry, and gotten the consolers off their sofas and controllers and into their chairs and keyboards.

Zeno Clash – the different game that got away (because it never sold [because it was never supported by publishers.])

Sequels saving the day, you say? Let’s take a look.

The last few months has seen huge releases of highly anticipated sequels. Mass Effect 2, Aliens vs. Predator, Bioshock 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Stalker: Call of Pripyat etc. The list goes on. What do these games all have in common? Not all were comparable to blockbusters of the cinema world (a dying breed, at that). Not all oozed quality and all around awesomeness (AvP, I’m looking at you, you disappointingly disabled successor.) What they all had in common was the hype they generated, the seed of anticipation they planted months or years ago early in development, watering fruitfully and generously, so that, when release date came, hordes of tired PC gaming vets (and even some consolers – are pigs flying?) once again dipped their hair trigger forefingers back into the PC puddle. It was a puddle that once was drying and coated in a film of slimy mold, but these sequels have been the rain that, for the time being anyway, has washed that all away.

But are sequels really saving the day? Or just keeping a punctured boat afloat? New game ideas and franchises just don’t really cut it these days, no matter how original the concepts are. Look at Zeno Clash, that wondrously weird thing that featured first-person hand-to-hand in a wonky, distorted world. It got great reviews, but has anybody heard of it? Borderlands was supposed to be different, but all the difference amounted to was fancy cell-shaded graphics, not even all that different since XIII did it what seems like aeons ago to largely the same shrug-it-off effect. Global Agenda was supposed to be the next Team Fortress 2, Tribes and Battlefield all in one glorious package. Does anyone even play that? Metro 2033 has seen some success, it’s game atmosphere receiving raves from reviewers all over. But still, it’s hardly something new. Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl did that years ago too.

The point to all of this is that when games try something new, something unique, it often doesn’t fly with publishers. These game become independent games (Braid and World of Goo being two lovely examples) because publishers don’t see profit$ in them. Instead, we get the same old re-releases of old games on new and improved technology (virtually guaranteeing that your 2 to 3 year old computer won’t be able to run it without complaining.) If we take a look at some upcoming, guaranteed to be big-hit games, we can see that they are all sequels: Civilization V, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Mass Effect 3, Mafia II… you get the picture.

Now comes the argument analogous to chickens and eggs. Is it that the publishers of games – where the money is – don’t want to take risks, don’t want to try something new and instead stick to the same old stuff? Or is it that gamers are stubborn creatures of habit, never wanting to stray far from familiar gaming ground so that they might – once again – play through a parallel and all-too-similar story in a game which features all-too-similar mechanics? Who started this slippery slope of weak standards? Sure, Mass Effect 2 was a really great game. It was basically a new story plugged into Mass Effect 1 with all the annoying game mechanics stripped out (and some new annoying ones put in) which was basically a redo of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in a new game universe. They are the same games with slightly different stories. The above mentioned are BioWare games – stinking of good quality and lacking in real innovation. There are also Valve games (Half Life, Half Life 2, etc.) There are also Ubisoft games (Mirror’s Edge, Prince of Persia, Assassins Creed). Those last 3 are particular offenders as they all involve killing people acrobatically, shamelessly milking the Parkour craze presumably until it is dried up and mummified.

Maybe PC gaming is stuck in some blockbuster-obsessed loop. Though it is nowhere near the money maker that cinema is, the film industry has seen some change over the last decade. Blockbusters are no longer a huge emphasis. Massively funded projects are getting fewer. Attribute it to the economy? Perhaps. But now we see films like Coens’, or Boyle’s that reach mainstream audiences with great success but do so without the gimmicky, gaudy razzle-dazzle the likes of Transformers gives us. Are we waiting for the same movement in PC games? We no longer need huge story arcs, massively epic tales of universe-saving-or-shattering proportions. Let’s get some real character story, some real and clever gameplay mechanics. Perhaps we already missed that boat (Grim Fandango, Monkey Island series, Fallout 1/2), but nobody said it couldn’t come round again.

I might just be a bitter, tired and idealistic PC gamer, who clings onto games of old (the only game I play today is one that was released in 2001). These sequels are saving the day. They are keeping the industry afloat, keeping it profitable, but only barely. The problem is that it has become a closed loop – only games that are likely to be profitable (and what is, in these pirate laden days?) are ever invested in so we get the same old stuff re-released under new names. I suppose the problem is nothing new, but it won’t stop me from bitching about it.

-HS

Tags: computer, computer games, game, innovation, PC gaming, sequel, sequels
Posted in Features