I Remember When

By Rob Anderson

I'll get this right out of the way - I'm an "old school" gamer.  My first foray into gaming came on the NES. That would be the 8bit, jump over koopas, make blocks stack, pop in the cartridge, Nintendo Entertainment System.  It played games.

Just games.

And it was entertaining.

Now days the console makers seem to think that I need to be able to watch videos, talk to friends, watch TV, and listen to music on my console.  But what about the games?

Watching a next-gen console reveal I was shocked at the lack of games that were shown.  It was all about watching movies, sending messages to my "friends", and multi-tasking.  But I want to play games.

There is an old saying, "Dance with the girl you came with".  For us in the console world, that is the games.  Provide me the best gaming experience possible and I am yours for life.  Yes, in today's world that does mean make it easy to play with people all over the world.  I live in the U.S. and play all the time with people in the U.K.  That's great…  Let's remember that I wouldn't be doing that if the game wasn't worth it.

I miss the days when developers focused on the game, the story, the way it played, and getting it right the first time, because there was no second chance.  This was the days before DLC, before day one patching, before tweaks.  The game had to be done and good enough for people to want to play it from the very first time it hit the console, or you can kiss your revenue stream good-bye.

It seems that now we as the gaming community have become so impatient that we are demanding a top tier release from every producer every year.  This has forced publishers to do things like use multiple developers for the same franchise, leading to inconsistent content and even the death of a once much loved franchise.

What would have happened if the game developer would have had the time to produce a top notch product and release it once they knew it was ready?  Would there still have been so many problems on launch day? Or would the game have fared better from working all the bugs out before release?

Another title from the same publisher is in development.  It’s another sequel and it is being done by the same developer that made the original.  I personally am looking forward to it because the release date on the website says “Coming When It’s Ready”.  Well done.

Rockstar are known as a developer who takes its time.

Console makers: Remember why we came.  We came to play the games.

Publishers: We won’t keep paying for games that just aren’t ready to be played.  Take your time.

You can keep your videos.  You can keep your music and web browsers.  I will continue to dance with the one I came with.  I will continue to play the games.