Is the Gaming Boom Going Bust

For the past 3 years or so games and gamers have been high profile. Yet this year it seems that some of that is falling off. I have some theories as to why.

First and foremost is oversaturation. Everyone and their brother has gaming blog, podcast, or whatever. Non gamers have stopped being curious about the sub culture and started being annoyed.

No diversity in L&F. Bartle said it when he said he had played Warhammer, it was called World of Warcraft. The games are starting to all look alike. Many years ago the trend was to look like EOB then it moved to the Diablo look, now it is Warcraft look. Very little in the design or the functionalty makes a game stand out within its genre.

Economy. Yes it is hitting the gaming market. People are starting to think about what game they are going play next and count their pennies. People are returning to titles and online games that are safe or at least that they know they like.

The morph of the craft into a business. Game coders used to be the renegades of the programming world. They were the true geeks, they did not work for deadlines. They worked to make it good. This was not always the utopia some make it out to be. Games did not work or worked only on some systems or with some co processors, games went way over cost and were outdated when they came out. Or they never came out. Many companies went under, suffered from hostile takeovers or were flat out bought out. The pendulem has swung too far in the opposite direction now. It has become big business and markleting rules all. Game companies announce release dates and are held to them. Too much structure stifles creativity.

More in a day or two.

Gamers of the world Unite!

Once upon a time a gamer joined a strat game on a morpg that has servers all over the world. Here is a short discussion of what happened

The tone of the linked article is not what I would like but the issue is a real one. The gaming community is worldwide. Morpgs require teamwork in some way. Not all members of a server speak the same language. So What should we do? Withdraw into our own little English/French/Spanish only world or seek a solution?

To me the solution is not to set up barriers or isolate people according to the language they speak, but rather to provide an environment in which all CAN communicate. Impossible you say? Not so. Take into consideration game players who are visually impaired. They use something called a speech client. The most commonly used speech client worldwide is Jaws. A gamer with whom I am acquainted lives in Brazil. She uses Jaws with an app that helps with translation from English to Portuguese. Now it is not perfect and honestly she spends a lot of time honing her English skills, but wouldn't it be nice if a gaming company partnered with a translation company to create an interface where we could understand each other?

I don't mean complex communication. I mean things like Leader: "Kasuke go around the west, make noise, draw them off. VerdeLapin you go right and sneak up behind them. Zwei you support him. The two of you take out any remaining guards." Global cooperation through gaming - Making friends around the world and being able to play with them because you can communicate via the game effectively. Call me a an old hippie type if you want but seems to me that might just be one of the first steps to understanding people and cultures - being able to communicate with them.

Of course this is just a pipe dream. Heavens forefend a gaming company actually or ANY company for that matter, actually adding a useful feature to an established product. That would mean the end of the world.