Gamestop and the video game drones.

I had an interview at the new Gamestop opening in town on tuesday. First thing I noticed when I met the store manager is that he looked nothing like a gamer. The interview consisted of nothing about games, but the typical corporate shit that they somehow think is important for someone who wants to work at a video game store. After the final questions, "What does pride mean to you?" and "How can an individual affect the whole of a corporation?" I was told that I should have dressed more professionally. I had figured wearing an Earthworm Jim T-Shirt and a new clean pair of khaki shorts would have been fine for a summertime interview at a video game store. Till the manager and his flunky said they had no idea who the character was.

It really hit me then, that this is what my beloved industry has fallen too. Massive Wal-Mart style chain stores filled with mindless drones who only play whats new and hip and most importantly what has the best graphics. Being paid by major industry leaders such as Microsoft and EA to push whatever new game they've come out with no matter how crappy it is or what any of the reviews say.

It's not just the retail side that really gets me down, it's the development of crap game after crap game after crap game that really saddens me. If a game isn't pixel perfect looking now a days it's immediately thrown to the backburner, making it harder for developers to come out with a game that not only plays well but will even be looked at by the average gamer. So in turn we get games that are amazing looking but leave little room for creativity in terms of gameplay. All the super realistic WW2 games are the most obvious example. Basing a game around a real place and a real time just means you have most of the game design already done for you and it's just a matter of recreating it in a 3d engine. Personally I miss it when game designers were forced to be creative by the lack of technology they had to work with. Don't get me wrong I love the new tech just as much but it never seems like it's ever used to it's full potential. We finally have the capability to create whatever you could possibly imagine in a video game, yet whenever something truly creative comes out it's immediately overlooked for the next Halo or Battlefield game.

Game design in the modern day just seems to be how pretty can we possibly make a game followed by how easy can we make it for players to learn. I havn't played a game in years that had a learning time of over an hour, a game that took a good month of practice before you had a chance online. The Counter-Strikes and COD's of the world took over, and turned what used to take insane caffeine induced reflexes and an ungodly high mouse sensitivity into look ma I can point and click on a target moving 4 times slower than it takes me to turn all the way around.

I've lost momentum in this rant, there will be more to follow and more about my exploration of classic games.