The Video Game Industry needs to press Reset

When Mr Eagle Eye was still a little shit living in the nest , he spent much time on on his various computer game machines! I fondly remember spending so many hours playing the likes of Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force II, Super Hero League of Hoboken from the mid-90s. Looking back, I remember playing video games was a source of imagination, creativity and fun, the chance to enter the warped realities of niche games!

In Super Hero League of Hoboken, one of my favourites of all time, you can kill your enemies by increasing their cholesterol level, and can have your entire party decimated when a 'Beaureau-Crat' opens it's draw to spill red tape! Come on, what kind of game these days dares to dance with something so on the edge? What game features a post-apocalyptic world where you are under attack by living tupperware, obsessive fitness robots and self-aware, snarling farm machinery? In what game nowadays do your superheroes have such superpowers as 'Eat Spicy Food Without Distress' and 'Look inside a Pizza Box without Opening It'? Answer me! Answer me, modern gaming industry!

Super Hero League of Hoboken was created before the video-game market took off big-time in the mid-late 90's, when the Playstation built on ground gained by earlier successful Nintento and Sega consoles. However, the market going mainstream was the death-knell for fringe games like the aforementioned classic. The big-time money lay not for parody-RPGs of a warped nature.

Taking my Eagle's Eye View, the following peck-points I shall make with my angered beak!

• Much of the mainstream market is not interested in fringe titles. Therefore, sport, driving, beat-em-ups, and shooting titles have come to dominate the shelves. Reason is simple from a business point of view; more people will buy them. However, by taking such safe bets on real life simulator games, new content and imagination has been all but lost completley! A travesty, and it makes Mr Eagle Eye go cross-eyed with rage! Remember when Worms was released? It was super cool, because it was so original, so different, and was a huge success. However, if Worms was put forward as a games idea nowadays, it would be laughed out the boardroom. Mr Eagle Eye ponders how many other such proposals that could have been big-money hits were ripped up in the offices of the games companies. Risk-taking has nosedived faster than Mr Eagle Eye when he needs to take a crap.
  
• With the gaming industry so mainstream these days, there are far too many third parties involved, akin to a barrage of cocks trying to get themselves into the hen. Sponsors are plastered on seemingly every polygon on the screen, music from recognized artists while you play. While a smattering could be ok for select titles, it all detracts from what in Mr Eagle Eye's opinion, a video-game should be about; entering an alternate reality to flex the wings of your imagination. If I like Nike (which I don't because their logo looks like a birdshite carried in the wind), I'd go buy a pair of their trainers. If I like Coca Cola, I'd drink it. If I like a band, I'll go listen to their stuff. Add to that the increasing level of interference from parent's groups, politicians, and there have been way too many cockerals ramming that poor hen up the arse she is damaged for good, with no chance of laying the good eggs all the cocks wanted. Mr Eagle Eye is highly displeased, for good eggs are a great source of protein. Instead, we're getting rotten eggs!
  
• Sequelitis has grown from an affliction affecting a handful of games into an epidemic that is swallowing the game industry. Mr Eagle Eye cannot so much as spread his wings in a video store without his feathers being tarnished by suffixes! As I was sqwaking in my previous peck-points, this is because games chiefs are scared shitless of not only losing money, but risking publicity. Why risk money and ridicule when you can release what you did last year and charge full price? The only good thing to come out of this is that, even if Number 10's education system renders the youth so illiterate that they cannot count to 10 and beyond (some series are taking the piss these days), the video game industry is helping out with basic math!
  
• Following on from this, I'm going to take a massive shite on this peck-point, that may cause more division of opinion so large that it may even dwarf the size of my birdshite, or even my ego! Game Engines! These, in the opinion of Mr Eagle Eye, have been one of the biggest bullets to be put in the head of originality in computer gaming. The principle, to create a game template and copy it from title to title with a bit of tweaking is easy to fathom from a business sense, and is likely a massive load off the programmers mind once they get an effective one. But, it has allowed developers to get lazy, and led to a more clones than a sex party at the abode of Dolly the Sheep.
• The consoles and various video-game machinery of today have such dynamic hardware that they are capable of much more in terms of graphical representation, in-game physics, sound and so on. However, this has meant that the cost of video game development has ballooned, and that games now spend years in development, not just months, even if you have a game engine to help. Imagine spending a year twiddling the code for a sports game, in comparison to developing something crazy and warped in a matter of months. Which is more motivating to thee?
  

That's enough peck points to blunt my beak, but I after I have depressed you, it is my job as an overly dramatic storyteller to bring your depleted spirit back from the abyss! There is hope for video-games! It lays in taking gaming back to it's roots before the days of photo-realistic graphics. Whilst traditional consoles continue to go down the 'real' route, other independent developers are plugging the gap. On modern platforms and interfaces such as the iPhone, yet with good old originality, they are the breath of fresh air to relieve the atmosphere after a decade of vomiting over a games industry that made Mr Eagle Eye sick!