Calling All Game Designers...!!!

Okay...so you're sitting in your office, looking at all of today's biggest games and wondering how you can make them better. You're playing them for hours and hour, taking notes on every minuscule gripe you can find about the game so you can go back, reformat the game the way you want it, and have yourself a hit.

The proceeding story is, sadly, a true one. This seems to be the basic game design process that game designers go through when making new games. They've tossed originality, art, out the window in favor of pleasing the business minds that run the publishing companies. Perhaps the gaming industry was better when it was small; game publishers were as passionate about games as the designers, and didn't enter the business with the intent of making a buck, but rather making a good product. Truthfully, most publishers back then were the same people that put the game together in the first place; the game industry was much smaller and mostly self-funded. Today's business minds see games as a smart business venture. Do they care about the art? No. They only care about what they think they can sell the most of.

Take, for example, Microsoft. Do you think Microsoft entered the gaming arena with any passion for the artform? Doubtful. More likely, Microsoft saw how much money could be made if they entered the arena. Microsoft creature a technically powerful machine capable of doing fantastic visuals (better than the better-selling PS2). The problem was that after Microsoft sunk all this money into developing this system to put out these high-quality grapics, they wanted games to take advantage of the technology. Microsoft didn't want to license their technology to artsy games; they wanted technical showcases.

Even though I bash the Wii for its lack of quality games (an argument I stand by), I will admit that Nintendo has taken the route of gameplay first/graphics last that allows artsy designers to put games out on the Wii. Combine that with the fact that the Wii is the fastest selling system and publishers are actually willing to put out artsy games on the Wii. It's a great system for keeping the art of gaming alive.