So, E3 came and went as usual, with the AAA developers taking center stage yet again. Basically one huge marketing scheme, E3 was always about the developers hyping up their new product, with the audience slurping it up. Sure, a Final Fantasy 7 remake sounds cool, but given modern day Square-Enix’s tendency to turn every product, both new and old, into something far less than it could have been (see: Thief 4), I’m worried, not for my own enjoyment-I was never really fond of FF7 anyway-, but for the numerous, numerous fans of the franchise, who would have to suffer yet another disappointment in this fallen angel of a franchise. As for the hype machine that is E3, this year was no different. EA showed mostly their sports franchises, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that people who tend to play games such as FIFA or Madden mostly don’t care about E3. After all, the core gameplay remains pretty much the same, so why should they need to? As for everything else, it just sorta coalesced into giant blob of shooty games. Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1 (what a stupid name), that one Tom Clancy game, which’s name I can’t remember thanks to it looking like a generic third-person shooter (knowing Ubisoft, you’ll probably have to use Uplay to play the game, which I choose to believe is Yves Guillemot’s way of saying that PC gamers can’t be trusted with a single client, so they need two of them.) That’s not to say that shooting games are inherently bad. After all, I am glad to see Quake make a return. It’s just that they’re the most related to today’s heated, heated topic. Because of the Orlando shooting, some people feel that the games put on display are a tad insensitive to those who were slaughtered in the Pulse nightclub. They feel that the industry has no tact when it comes to these things. Now, before we get into this, I just want to get a couple things out of the way: I’m not going to name the folks who are saying these things, because if someone actually comes across this, they may want to attack them, and, while most people already know the men and women saying these things, I don’t want to be accused of inciting harassment. Another thing: THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GAMERGATE. Just because it’s somewhat politically charged, doesn’t mean I’m pro or anti GG. This has nothing to do with sexism, harassment, invasion of privacy, or ethics in games journalism (though I would like to tackle the latter subject, perhaps when I’ve accrued an actual audience and credibility). This has to do with insensitivity, and whether it makes sense in this case or not. So don’t go calling me a Trump supporter (as if being one automatically makes you a member of the Third Reich, the KKK, and ISIS) or an SJW. If you do, please, crawl back into the hole from whence you came. God knows we could use less extremists on both sides. Now that I’ve weeded out the idiots, let’s get digging.
Personally, it’s a bit of a no-brainer that I would disagree with the idea that this is insensitive to those who died, and games “glorify violence”. You guys who are saying these things sound somewhat like a less extreme Jack Thompson. None of these games involve specifically shooting those who are defenseless, or those who are a part of the LGBT community. Do they look alike? Yeah. Could they be good? Yeah. Are they spewing hate speech? No! The only thing that the massacre in Orlando and the massacres in, say, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare have in common are the weapons. Of course these games aren’t homophobic! EA has even championed LGBT rights in the past! Now, on the subject of the games themselves, I actually would like to see more variety in genres, but not because of the supposed “homophobia” that these games have. I’d like to see more variety because the industry is currently treading water. While I love shooters of both the first and third-person phenotypes, there has to be a point when we say that enough is enough. Give us more RPGs (and not the dumbed-down, modern-Bethesda type, where dialogue options are vague, karma is gone, and skills are replaced by perks. Yes, I am still salty over the colossal disappointment that was Fallout 4), horror titles, platformers, point-and-clicks! Give us interesting new IPs along with the old guard! Honestly, it feels like there’s nothing other than sequels at this point, and I feel like I’m going to play indie titles more often now, since they usually have at least interesting concepts.
TL;DR: Yes, there needs to be more variety in genres at E3, for the sake of piquing the interest of more types of gamers.
Written by Theunknowngamer
theunknowngamerblog 