Modern Gaming: Flash or Focus?

[Brend]

It seems like every new title that arrives these days are more ambitious in PR-speak and marketing focus as the generation gets into it's full gear...however with these promises of 'never seen before' and 'unlimited content' we also see yearly sequels, bug-ridden launches and flat-out failures to do anything right. Where we get told one thing, another is delivered.

Similarly, this trend in the industry has lead people to get very defensive over developer/publisher scope and focus, developers aim for heights not reached in graphical fidelity or feature-list negating the core-basics that make a game memorable - and most importantly; Fun. The word 'Fun' almost seems to be a voodoo term in many gaming circles these days, gone are the days when people played games to have a laugh and use them as the grown-up toys they were once intended to be, now gaming aims to lose people in cinematic worlds and vast spaces for the player to explore.

My question to GTPlanet is this; Do you prefer a focus-driven game where the developers doesn't aim for the stars and make promises which turn out to be half-baked and sometimes forgot about completely or a flashy title that tries to break the mold by aiming for the seemingly impossible and comes across as a spectacle/experience rather than a traditional game and at that expense, it can be a bit buggy and outdated with the following sequel rather than standing as a timeless achievement?

 

[AudiMan2011]

Developers should only have one focus: make games that the players can enjoy and not for the accountants and shareholders in the company.

These days, I'd rather have a game that looked like a pile of dog sick but played beautifully, rather than a game that looked as close to reality as possible but played like complete tripe on a bike.

There needs to be a balance between graphics and gameplay whilst maximising fun factor that many games (racing games for example) have lost thanks to all this corporate bull:censored:.

Fun these days has been replaced by needless grinding, pay-to-win microtransactions, the sick culture of pre-order bonuses, and communities formed for one genre turning against each other over the focus points of different games within the same genre.

Games should return to a simpler focus like they had back in the PS2 days where the games were more complete.

 

[Lain]

I can't really decide between the poll options... I like and appreciate both.

Games can't grow as a medium without games that try to push the boundaries, even if those games aren't perfect. But naturally, it wouldn't be a good thing for every game to be like that. You need games where tried & true gameplay is honed to perfection as well.

What I dislike is what AudiMan touched on... games that are neither. Games that are made with no interest in either pushing the boundaries or perfecting/refining established gameplay mechanics, but are instead just a half-assed rehash meant to make a quick buck. This type of thing is becoming all too prevalent these days with mobile gaming becoming the norm (not that there aren't fantastic mobile gaming experiences, it's just that the shovelware vastly outweighs it) and execs drooling at the prospect of easy money in the form of microtransactions.

Fortunately, crowdfunding has emerged as another viable way of allowing inspired gaming experiences to come to fruition.

 

[Wolfe]

I think both are important, with a caveat.

To me, the best games are ones that tread familiar ground, either using new concepts or features to branch off into new directions from that foundation, polishing the core gameplay to gleaming near-perfection while innovating on level/environment design and treating your eyes and ears to new themes and aesthetics (or delightful nostalgia ), or combining proven ideas from different genres/subgenres. The key is to provide fresh experiences, even if the game is constructed entirely from familiar elements.

I also admire ambitious games that push the medium in new and interesting directions, like Lain said, even if the results are mixed. They're rarely the ideal game, but they can establish new foundations for future "focus-driven" games to build upon, and occasionally, they're outstandingly brilliant in spite of glaring flaws. In my experience, the best examples of this are games that either attempt a wholly innovative form of gameplay, or ones that explore clever ways to inflate the scope of the game or add depth to its world (eg. procedurally generated environments, loot, enemies, etc.).

That's not quite the same as what I consider a "flashy" game, though. In my opinion, shooting for the stars with maximum-fidelity photorealistic graphics or "cinematic" setpieces has done relatively little to benefit the medium, particularly when it involves streamlined or dumbed-down gameplay and a glut of mind-numbing cutscenes to expound upon a shoddy story.

 

[Brend]

The reason I put a 'bit unambitious' in the focused answer was to highlight that the game is stagnent in features but does implement a few new things very well, rather than a bunch of new things that miss the core basics of gaming completely.

Judging on this poll so far it makes me wonder why devs and publishers still money-roll shallow graphic-centric games.