Just games in general.

11/28/2018

My attitude toward Pokémon GO has changed a lot. Now I don’t even really want to go near it. I’ve realized it’s pretty much Safari Zone the game because a lot of the times things are going to break out and run off unless they’re low level stuff. Seeing it put into context within a full $60 game was definitely the deal breaker. Then I also think about how all those other little franchises that were usually just $40 on a handheld are now going to be about $60 as well since everything’s moving up to the Switch.

Even though some good games have apparently come out this year, I’ve mainly been looking at the new Smash Bros. which is one reason why I got a Switch recently. Go figure a lot of the good ones that have come out, as far as big releases, were generally on the PS4 exclusively, at least for a time. Or at least not as much on PC. Things haven’t been as good on PC with how the main distributors aren’t really keeping it on top of things. With consoles competing with PC, it’s just making mobile edge in more with its supposedly low cost of entry, though smartphones actually cost a lot, upwards of $500 usually for a mid-range. And people go through these pretty frequently whether or not they actually need to replace them. It’s all about hiding costs, with the hardware as well as the software.

Of course there’s also been multiple terrible things happening in games in general which is a problem for the whole industry, if major companies keep dropping dead or producing sub-par products or otherwise doing terrible things to customers and/or employees. The insistence of having microtransactions in everything and always being connected online just makes the whole thing seem more fleeting in the end. Physical copies are in a weird state where they’re sometimes not really necessary but still get made despite requiring online connections to finish the download or are even just a code in a box. Cloud gaming is sort of broken if, for example, your ISP decides your IP belongs halfway across the country and therefore the server auto picker thing chooses a server that’s actually a lot further than the rest and disqualifies you from playing.

I still think indie games are the future. It’s where all the weird ideas are happening and I’d like them to be successful but not so successful they sell out and their whole thing gets picked up and stripped down by some big company. Taking it as a desire to make games and not as an obligation to make money, though society’s structure insists that profit is a possibility. Making sure the creators involved are still involved as long as they want to be and not just deal with a shell of a concept a decade later. It’s what games were when they started out, smaller groups just wanting to come up with ideas because they can. Less of a need to make an even bigger game than the last one such as with long-running series. Realism because it needs to be done that way for that idea, not just because it sells.

When it comes to what games I’d like to make, I’m going to look at just about anything, but I’ll keep it simple and mainly a game. I’m not out to make the next Undertale or Five Nights or whatever else took off, but I do like weird ideas.

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