Wow, I almost let more than a week pass without doing another blog! I said in my last blog that I was going to try to do at least one a week. Good habits are really hard to get into. Anyway, before I get into the topic, a quick gaming update.
Part of the reason why I never got around to writing a blog was because I was busy focusing on A Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for the 3DS. I wanted to have it done before Yoshi's Crafted World on the Switch arrived, and I didn't quite make it. Yoshi arrived yesterday morning and I just beat Majora's Mask last night. So what did I think of it? Honestly, I probably would have appreciated it a lot more if I played it when it first came out. I love the world, the characters, the story, the weirdness and darkness. What I don't love is the constant pressure the three day cycle imposes on you. For that reason, I used a walkthrough pretty much every step of the way. I was not trying to waste any time with it at all. This meant that I acquired all the masks before I met the Skull Kid, so he gave me the Fierce Deity's Mask and wow... I have never beaten a final boss so quickly in all my gaming life... Anyway, Majora is finally done.
So Yoshi's Crafted World is ungodly cute. I think so far I still like the aesthetic of Woolly World over Crafted World, but I'm still very early in so that could change. To be quite honest, I didn't even want to write tonight's blog because I'm itching to go back to the game. I love peaceful platformers that put more focus on looking for hidden stuff and man, some of the hidden stuff is quite clever. It also feels good to play a Switch game again that isn't Smash. My Switch actually ended up with a slight layer of dust for the first time since I got it at launch. Gaming update done.
There is too much consumerism in the games industry. I think this is a statement that you'd have to be hard pressed to argue against. Elder Scrolls Blades was just released today and as you'd expect, it's a mobile translation of a PC/console franchise built from the ground up to incentivize players to spend money on loot boxes. This is no surprise, just keeping up with the trend of the industry. Honestly, who'd blame them? Give gamers less of a game, milk money out of people too stupid to keep their credit cards in their wallets, also known as whales. And these whales develop serious issues. There's countless stories of people who are unable to stop buying microtransactions because they're stuck in a feedback loop of hoping against hope that they get that one perfect Legendary weapon. It's predatory and companies who enact these business practices should be ashamed.
But that's just one example. Loot shooters in general are prime examples of greed. Anthem is getting completely lambasted because of how it's currently structured. It's a beautiful shooter that plays well, but has very little interesting content and somehow, EA thinks they continue to charge money for microtransactions that don't really serve a purpose. EA's surprise shooter Apex Legends came out of nowhere and was very well received, but is starting to catch flack for the introduction of a battle pass. From what I've heard, the battle pass doesn't contain much worthwhile content, so ... aren't we getting tired of companies charging us JUST to charge us? How sad that it's gotten to this point that we're just so eager to hand over money to companies like EA just for the privilege of playing their games...
Now there's Stadia. There's so much money in the games industry that Google is now in the works to bring us a streaming service. Pay them every month (or yearly, who knows what the pricing will be like) and you can have access to all the games they put on their servers. It might sound like a good idea on paper, access to unlimited games, but then I wonder if that would be good for gaming at all. If Stadia took off and became the standard, wouldn't there be so many games to play that lesser known titles would simply fade away? Would there be a lower completion rate since people don't feel obligated to finish their games as they aren't paying for them individually? And what about Apple Arcade? It's another subscription service that people will just end up filling their devices with loads of games, and they probably won't even play a fraction of them.
And I myself am a victim of consumerism. I have a never-ending backlog that only got as big as it did because I couldn't tell myself no when it came to new game releases. This year, though, I've slowed down considerably. I've only bought two games this year: Crackdown 3 and Yoshi's Crafted World. I'm focusing on my backlog. That's why I just now got around to finishing a nearly 20 year old game (although it was a remaster on the 3DS). If you read my previous blog, you'd also know that I was playing older games from this generation as well. I'm really looking forward to making a sizable dent in my backlog and by doing so, I can help myself by saving money. I don't need Sekiro, although I want it. I didn't need Read Dead Redemption 2 or Resident Evil 2 or Ace Combat 7, so I didn't buy them. I don't need Days Gone, and I might end up passing on it in favor of Cup Head. I might pass on a highly anticipated Sony exclusive in favor of a ... port of an Xbox game that last month was thought would never get ported to the Switch... Not only do I have more of a desire to play Cup Head than Days Gone, Cup Head being ported to the Switch also has more historic value.
So is consumerism something we can even battle? How do we improve this? It doesn't seem like companies are learning. Even with so many outspoken people against mobile games, Elder Scrolls Blades still came out. After the debacle that was Star Wars Battlefront II, EA still put out Anthem. People hate day one DLC and season passes, yet we're getting news about DLC characters before Mortal Kombat XI has even released, The outspoken people, myself included, don't seem to be enough in number to offset the people who just don't care and will fling their money at whatever little games they want to play.
Honestly, I don't know why I wrote this blog since I can't seem to come up with a solution. I guess I'm just venting. I want to see more gamers care about their hobbies, start being more responsible with their spending, and realize that their purchasing decisions have far reaching effects. I think it would benefit game companies to slow down on pumping out as much content as they can to make the most money they can and instead focus on making the best games they can. That ultimately would benefit us gamers by having better games to choose from and not feel so overwhelmed with keeping up with new games, a less is more sort of thing. All I can do on my end is just try to spend less. I honestly wonder how long this one game a month thing is going to last. We'll see...
No comments:
Post a Comment