teh2Dgamer's 2.5D Gaming.: July 2009

Monday, July 13, 2009

Do you ever get tired of the over exposure some games get?

Note: I originally posted this in a topic on GamePro.com, but I decided that it was worthy enough to add to my blog

It seems lately that, though there are hundreds if not thousands of games released every year, we only really hear about a small handful of them. I know that it's not realistic to expect any magazine/website to possibly cover them all. There are just too many. However, why does it seem that only a small handful of games even get any attention from the gaming media?

I know that those games are more likely to get the website hits, and to sell the magazines, but am I the only one who gets so tired of hearing about these games that by the time they come out I couldn't force myself to care about them?

Back in the day I was completely content on reading one page to half a page about what the premise of a game was, and then that was good enough. If it sounded interesting then I'd look into it. Today however that doesn't seem to be good enough. They've gotta be ten, twenty, or even thirty page blowouts focusing on just one game. Maybe it's just me, but I could never be so into just one game to want to read that much about it. Do you really need to know everything about that one game before you get it? There are no surprises anymore.

The worst part is, all that extra space could be given to games that won't get the attention they deserve. The reason why gaming seems to be stagnating as of late isn't so much that alternative games aren't out there, it's that they aren't getting the attention they deserve due to the massive over-hype of the big name games. If they don't get the attention, they don't get the sales, and they don't get sequels. It's sad to see some truly innovative games go completely unnoticed by the gaming public at large, because the magazines and website decide to spend their time hyping up every aspect of one or two big name games.

Look, the big name games are going to sell millions of copies regardless. Why not focus more energy trying to help out the lesser known games?

The internet sites are worse about it than the magazines I'm afraid. Every little detail is given front page status. "Breaking News: The main character now has a knife as a weapon. Breaking Breaking News: It's not a knife it's a pair of scissors. Breaking Breaking Breaking News: It's actually a pair of scissors that morphs into a knife." I can't imagine how anyone out there could possibly care enough to salivate over every minute detail of one game enough to want hear about that same game every hour on the hour. Does that kind of stuff really deserve front page treatment? Wouldn't you rather that space be used to bring your attention to a potentially great game that you previously didn't even know existed?

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I just don't care that much about any one game to want to devote that much time and energy looking over every last detail while ignoring every other potential great game out there. Maybe it's because I'm an out-of-the-mainstream gamer. I don't know.

What are your thoughts on this?