Greetings everyone.This is an opinionated piece, so don't get all worked out because I insulted your favourite game, tell me instead why do you like that game.
In all my years as a gamer, I've come to love and hate companies through their games, their marketing or their respective preachers.
Be it Sega vs Nintendo, you had your preferences, your colors, your technical data to counterattack in the playground time.
And that was an ok context if dealt with rational autocriticism, you could learn from others, or silently concede "victory" to your opponents when credit was due.
Not everyone was up to the simple task of being a damn human being, and the ocassional raging fanboy would burst in tears and throw you stones if you compared SNES Aladdin with MD Aladdin.It was like insulting his mother.Corporations started to carefully watch over gamer's passion and loyalty as consumers.
Then it got complex, SEGA had burnt fans irrespectfully, causing a huge exodus of people "joining" Sony and Nintendo.
At that point we had growing concerns with third parties, perhaps a Resident Evil version (Saturn) did not have transparencies and texture filtering was inferior, then, whose fault was? was it the hardware or the developer being lazy?
This situation escalated when traditional PC programmers joined the console realm in the sixth generation, like Epic.
Through the years, I did not learn programming , yet I learned programmers are not "lazy" just because a game is inferior in a platform.This, however, does not mean the console is "crippled" either.
The blame lies mostly in third party publishers, they grew exponentially this last 15 years, being now bigger than ever.They have almost absolute control over content, sequels, deadlines, budgets, and DRM.
Why? How? they absorbed dozens of tiny programming studios, aditionally media moguls and marketing lobbies literally bought whole companies just because they were beginning to give more revenue than movies.So when the honey jar was open, millions of flies appeared.
So, when income for dedicated programming is not clear, corners are cut.When piracy is an option abusive DRM is applied left and right.When a game is not finished, is released IN PARTS with the excuse of DLC, or as a conglomerate of leftovers in a sequel, "Last Fantasy 89: quest for your wallet".
If the marketing department says the public are now rabbits, carrot games will flood the market tomorrow.
There are few independent developers here and there, but make no mistake, the titans will swallow them at their first attempt of growth.
Activision is one of the worst offenders, a corporate conglomerate responsible for milking a franchise after supposedly harassing and "firing" their creators, they took IW's engine and literally ran with it.After all, they "funded" it, mmh? They also tried to gun down brutal legend, after rejecting it, just when EA took it from the garbage bin, they tried to settle it in court.Just because their mortal enemy took their leftovers, they tried to destroy Tim Schafer's creation.
Squeenix is also one of the Rotten Titans.Last pure, brave original games I remember from them are Vagrant Story and Chrono Cross.In the PS2 era, people were crying for a FFVII remake, but they did with it whatever they pleased.
What follows is the decent but broken FFX(no airship, 3 different music directors with nobuo uematsu's music unrecognizable, no world map, just one minigame, absolute absence of humor, sex or physical violence, no yoshitaka amano), more emphasis is put on CGI scenes and wardrobe. What follows is a huge hiatus with a PC final fantasy with no vertebral story (XI)(which non FF fans loved)and years of teasing with XII pics.Where was FFVII? broken down in a dozen mediocre spinoffs.Because hey, why doing a remake when you can give joey his own series?
FFXII was decent, but it was trying to be an historical action movie, again, with more emphasis in CGI and costume design than ever.Now it was like a theme park, there is no real controversy, is just a fashion parade pretending to be a pollitical comentary.And the ending...oh, FFXII ending segment.
I will not spoil things for anyone, I will just say it gave me the same sensation that SW: Episode I final scene.That is, of a soulless, bland thing infecting my eyes.
Don't even get me started on the whiny clowns and retarded summons of XIII.
FFXII's and XIII production timeframes were not justified in any form, feel free to think otherwise, but Squeenix is just playing it safe, milking the cow and trying to cater to non FF fans, I even dare to say, they are just trying to get to non gamers.You know, because they are "the potential market", "the new target", "a new breed of fans", also called "easy money".
So enjoy your FFXIII-2, some of us already know it's obviously crap before it releases.I also recently lost all hope in Vs XIII, the only game that got my interest back, you know, when it was announced SEVERAL years ago.
Squeenix, they do what they please, experts in CGI, fashion and absurd PR.The only thing I can thank them for is for publishing Nippon Ichi's Disgaea 3 in Europe.
Last drop comes from Capcom acting like the damn GESTAPO, with draconian DRM's that won't let you play your legally purchased content unless you're online, Activision Style pricing strategy, and now literally trying to make Megaman disappear from the face of the earth, they even confronted Megaman cosplayers in comic con, cancelled games, and blamed gamers for it.They just don't care RE5 is a dull action buddy movie, or that Dark Void is pure mainure.They, however, care to give the finger to EU territories with release dates and pricing, whenever possible.
Ubisoft...the sad king of shovelware, tons of party games and things with the letter Z in it (babyz, parrotz, shitz), Asassin's creed is way, way overrated.
The only thing I have hope for from them is Rayman Origins.
These are Developer/Publisher groups run by 60 Y.0., PhD's in economics, people which only concern is profit first, advertising second, gaming quality a distant tenth.They should learn from Developers like FROM or ATLUS, they should learn from brave and nice publishers like Bandai Namco, and over all, they have to learn from gaming history, that casual audiences will easily turn their backs on them when the next Iphone 9 with angry birds 2 and ZUMA RELOADED comes out.
This monsters are on the brink of making a disaster out of the gaming world if they keep on listening to their blind, ignorant marketing corpus.
It already went too far.Vote with your wallets and let 'em have it.
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