Topic: Complacent?

ADJECTIVE: 1. Contented to a fault; self-satisfied and unconcerned: He had become complacent after years of success.

Do you find that the industry has become complacent? As though gaming in general is not progressing but digressing? If you look at the state of gaming, we have not seen much change in the last few years. The Wii revolutionized the industry with the first ever motion controls where as the Xbox and PS3 broke ground with visuals. The industry has shifted and Sony and MS have followed suit to the motion control arena. I enjoy the Wii tremendously and some of the motion control games are rather fun, but, are we reduced to a gimmick across the board? More so, are we bound to a linear game style that we have seen so many times? Small gems such as The Elder Scrolls and Fable fade into the sea of games.

BEGIN FLAME WAR

I don't think the video game industry has become complacent.

Don't get me wrong, I realise that probably 90% of games are fairly generic pap without much imagination (particularly on the Wii - damn money-grabbers ), but that's not much different to how it's always been.
As for the rest of the industry, I think that there are always enough people out there willing to keep pushing the boundries. The pure ambition of games of recent years (Super Mario Galaxy, GTA IV, Mirror's Edge to name but a few) has been great, in particular, last winter's line-up (granted, mostly on non-ninty consoles) was probably the best there's ever been! Some admittidly have big intentions, then fail to live up to expectations (I'm thinking maybe Fuel recently, which tried making the biggest playing area of 5,000 square miles in size, but wasn't actually a particularly good game), but should at least be praised for the effort.

And as for upcoming games, I'm most looking forwards to Heavy Rain because it's risking trying a very different approach to playing, and is pushing the limits of the ps3, and there are even more, increasingly ambitious projects out there.
Also, the industry has noticed the successful impact of downloadable games which has seen smaller devs willing to try new things with little financial concern (e.g.World of Goo), whilst some bigger companies have joined in to make some smaller, but top quality games (like the recent XBLA release Shadow Complex, from Epic).

In terms of the hardware, complacency isn't really the issue. Some may say the recent motion controlled announcements from the other two are merely an attempt to jump on the Wiimote's bandwagon, but I think that this has simply showed, if anything, a good lack of complacency by them. The two projects (the PS3's motion controller and project Natal) are their attempts at pushing what can be done by their current technology, and are admittidly both incredibly impressive. Neither really needed to put the amount of effort into these things if they didn't want to, if Microsoft forced Bungie to pump out a Halo spin-off every month they'd still do fine, and sony don't need to put the amount of effort they do into their free online services, but as they do it shows they are still both concerned with pleasing current owners as well as tempting in new ones.

Oh, and there's also the obvious example of non-complacency, as EA have in the last couple of years actually stopped being complacent with nothing but endless licensed games of varying qualities, and nowadays almost all their products gleam with a well-built finish, and some even try new things (like Mirror's edge).

Wow, I wrote considerably more than I intended, lol

Why do you think the wimote is a gimmick?

Playing Prime 1 and Windwaker on GC, I would love wimote controls - cliciking to first person on windwaker to line up the 'star' icons with analog - that is so 2003....

I do not think the industry in any more or less complacent than it ever was - its always the same - a few standout games, a bunch of recycleware and me too games - so what?

I do not buy many games anyhow, so I could care less. There is more than enough to keep me going. And what is complacent about motion plus? Its pretty sweet, and certainly ambitious. This is the goldenage of Nintendo, a rebirth of their arcade heritage with the Wii series : single screen and fixed camera 3-d games, tons of great content on wiiware, and still delivering the goods with Mario Zelda, Metroid, M-Kart, etc.

'It dont matter whatever we do with whoever - it just don't get no better than this...." - L. Gatlin.

I don't like the "Flame Wars" at the end..

PLus if EVERY game was uber ambitious and excellent quality - they would not be -it is a paradox.

Then they would all be avaerage - there would be no dreck, and no standouts. No point of reference. Neither time nor space.

As long as I am here, as well as everyone else, I shall not tolerate flame wars. Flame wars are an inane excuse to not respect people's opinions, and just badger people for no apparent reason. Why don't opinions get respected?

Well stay on topic, dont beeasily offended and there will be no fuel for fire.

This is a benign topic, relax, please?