The gaming industry needs a massive change of perspective to gain true mass-market appeal
Nintendo managed to get the casual fluff out of the way pretty early on in their E3 conference, and given the retro-soaked smorgasboard of wonder they served up afterwards this is probably a good thing. If they thought that anyone was going to be fooled by another Wii Sports repackaged with Mario characters then they had another thing coming, and the ripple of applause that wouldn't have troubled a goldfish that followed the announcement of Wii Party was an invitation to move on at best. But what really got me was hearing Reggie Fils-Aime desperately describe Wii Party as a 'bridge game' that will supposedly give newer gamers a boost into more traditional fare. That's a lot to ask from the most unfortunately-titled game ever made.
Sorry Reggie, but Wii Party isn't a 'bridge' game. For starters, bridges go both ways, and Wii Party is only going to remind experienced gamers exactly why they're staying on their side of the river, namely that devoting an entire mini-game to one action is unutterably tedious. More importantly, the very concept of a bridge game is incredibly fatuous, as though the gaming world map is divided squarely into Casual County and the Kingdom of Hardcore, with a raging torrent in the middle that we haven't yet worked out how to cross.
For a true bridge game, look no further than Heavy Rain. Its critics will tell you that the game is an over-blown QTE-riddled cutscene, because that's exactly what it is - and is brilliant as a result. Heavy Rain doesn't so much bridge the river as fill it in, and the reason is that it provides a key experience that gaming is sorely missing. A triple-A blockbuster grounded in the prime-time TV thriller, Heavy Rain's story-driven approach strips away the usual video game fluff that gamers are so used to having that we have trouble wrapping our brains around the idea of losing them; Heavy Rain treats the control pad as an intuitive way to interact with a story, not as a system of rules whose mastery is an end in itself. There's no high score, upgrades or inventory screen; with the only goal being to enjoy the story and reach the end, Heavy Rain barely qualifies as a game, while stopping short of being a film. Hell, why can't it be both?
We've spent so many decades calling these things 'games' that when a project like Heavy Rain comes along we just can't shake the assumptions that the entire industry has ground into us from day one, before it could even be called an industry. Any gamer salivating over The Last Guardian knows full well that they won't be playing it to clobber enemies, solve puzzles or nab a few Trophies; as with predecessors Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the real reward lies in the absorbing atmosphere, the sorrowful world and the emotional punch that Team Ico's dual-protagonist approach has always conjured. The actual 'game' elements play second fiddle to the mark it leaves etched in your heart, and yet The Last Guardian runs the risk of becoming another mild sleeper hit because its approach to interactive media jars with what we expect that media should be.
The result of all this is the laughable mess we have today, where anything not designed for young males with their balls where their brains should be is assigned to either the casual ghetto or the arthouse shanty town; because gamers who want to cultivate an area rather than blow it up and raise animals instead of braining them are a relatively new mass-market, the industry assumes that their inexperience means they either want or need to be treated like simpletons, and by extension don't care about getting a high-quality experience. The glorious HD graphics, thumping surround sound and searing narratives are reserved for the gamers of the old-school, while the less masochistically violent are left to play Farmville, with the only commercial alternative of any note being Harvest Moon. And we're surprised that this new market of supposedly casual gamers doesn't stick around?
That we assume they don't care for games because they find them uninteresting rather than pathetically insipid is both self-destructive and utterly cretinous. Gaming demographics are far more varied than we once thought, and shows a thirst for interactive entertainment across generations and genders. But for gaming to truly succeed as a medium, it needs a new Heavy Rain far more than it needs a new Halo. The big blockbusters will still be the real chart toppers - just look at Hollywood. But like film, and television, and literature, video games have to approach every new project as its own entity, with no obligation to conform to mechanical stereotypes, and they need to stop treating their patrons like idiots. Inexperience and indifference are two entirely different things; learning that one simple lesson could be the true key to seeing the gaming industry flourish.
Nintendo managed to get the casual fluff out of the way pretty early on in their E3 conference, and given the retro-soaked smorgasboard of wonder they served up afterwards this is probably a good thing. If they thought that anyone was going to be fooled by another Wii Sports repackaged with Mario characters then they had another thing coming, and the ripple of applause that wouldn't have troubled a goldfish that followed the announcement of Wii Party was an invitation to move on at best. But what really got me was hearing Reggie Fils-Aime desperately describe Wii Party as a 'bridge game' that will supposedly give newer gamers a boost into more traditional fare. That's a lot to ask from the most unfortunately-titled game ever made.
Sorry Reggie, but Wii Party isn't a 'bridge' game. For starters, bridges go both ways, and Wii Party is only going to remind experienced gamers exactly why they're staying on their side of the river, namely that devoting an entire mini-game to one action is unutterably tedious. More importantly, the very concept of a bridge game is incredibly fatuous, as though the gaming world map is divided squarely into Casual County and the Kingdom of Hardcore, with a raging torrent in the middle that we haven't yet worked out how to cross.
For a true bridge game, look no further than Heavy Rain. Its critics will tell you that the game is an over-blown QTE-riddled cutscene, because that's exactly what it is - and is brilliant as a result. Heavy Rain doesn't so much bridge the river as fill it in, and the reason is that it provides a key experience that gaming is sorely missing. A triple-A blockbuster grounded in the prime-time TV thriller, Heavy Rain's story-driven approach strips away the usual video game fluff that gamers are so used to having that we have trouble wrapping our brains around the idea of losing them; Heavy Rain treats the control pad as an intuitive way to interact with a story, not as a system of rules whose mastery is an end in itself. There's no high score, upgrades or inventory screen; with the only goal being to enjoy the story and reach the end, Heavy Rain barely qualifies as a game, while stopping short of being a film. Hell, why can't it be both?
We've spent so many decades calling these things 'games' that when a project like Heavy Rain comes along we just can't shake the assumptions that the entire industry has ground into us from day one, before it could even be called an industry. Any gamer salivating over The Last Guardian knows full well that they won't be playing it to clobber enemies, solve puzzles or nab a few Trophies; as with predecessors Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the real reward lies in the absorbing atmosphere, the sorrowful world and the emotional punch that Team Ico's dual-protagonist approach has always conjured. The actual 'game' elements play second fiddle to the mark it leaves etched in your heart, and yet The Last Guardian runs the risk of becoming another mild sleeper hit because its approach to interactive media jars with what we expect that media should be.
The result of all this is the laughable mess we have today, where anything not designed for young males with their balls where their brains should be is assigned to either the casual ghetto or the arthouse shanty town; because gamers who want to cultivate an area rather than blow it up and raise animals instead of braining them are a relatively new mass-market, the industry assumes that their inexperience means they either want or need to be treated like simpletons, and by extension don't care about getting a high-quality experience. The glorious HD graphics, thumping surround sound and searing narratives are reserved for the gamers of the old-school, while the less masochistically violent are left to play Farmville, with the only commercial alternative of any note being Harvest Moon. And we're surprised that this new market of supposedly casual gamers doesn't stick around?
That we assume they don't care for games because they find them uninteresting rather than pathetically insipid is both self-destructive and utterly cretinous. Gaming demographics are far more varied than we once thought, and shows a thirst for interactive entertainment across generations and genders. But for gaming to truly succeed as a medium, it needs a new Heavy Rain far more than it needs a new Halo. The big blockbusters will still be the real chart toppers - just look at Hollywood. But like film, and television, and literature, video games have to approach every new project as its own entity, with no obligation to conform to mechanical stereotypes, and they need to stop treating their patrons like idiots. Inexperience and indifference are two entirely different things; learning that one simple lesson could be the true key to seeing the gaming industry flourish.
