New Year’s Resolutions For The Gaming World at Large

So while the rest of the Wirebot crew is telling you about the resolutions other people should make, or fictional characters should make, or what they’re making, I figured I’d do something that maybe would affect you, the reader, a little more directly. Here’s some Resolutions that the people who we call ‘gamers’ should be making; not every individual gamer, as such, but the entire group. The mob, you might say.

Siddown and listen, kids. Ya just might learn somethin’.

1) Stop Pirating Things

Gamers pirate things. Gamers pirate things a lot. Sure, not all gamers pirate things; sure, sometimes those games are really expensive, or relatively overpriced, or you just want to ‘try before you buy’. I’m sympathetic to those views. I like free stuff as much as the next guy. Up until about a year ago, I didn’t have a steady job, and had to rely on my parents for the next big videogame. But let’s get down to brass tacks here: piracy hurts the gaming industry.

I know that perhaps EA is the devil, and they’ve swallowed your favourite gaming company whole; or maybe you don’t like EB or GAME or JB-HiFi, so why should those corporate suits get their hands on my hard-earned cash? But here’s the rub: if those suits don’t get your money, the developers who make games don’t get your money. If the developers who make games don’t get your money, they’re out of jobs. And if the developers are out of jobs, gamers aren’t going to get any games to play. It’s as simple as that.

See, the videogames industry is just that: an industry. It has to make money in order to make products. And while there may be a few developers with the power to say “Screw the money, I have an artistic vision”, they’re incredibly rare - and unlikely to find popular support. Without a paying audience, or one that is predicted to be paying in the future, games aren’t going to get made, greenlighted, or even thought about. And that’s a bloody terrible thing.

So stop pirating videogames, people. Give your money to people who make games who deserve them - such as the people in the next resolution.

2) Support Innovation/Indie Games

The other side of the “Games-as-business” coin is that games that come through the popularity process aren’t always the best ones. The best way to make a game that is sure to sell is to appeal to an already-existing audience, and how do you do that best? By copying what has gone before. So sequalitis and formulaic games litter the gaming battlefield like so much brain-junk, bloated and predictable. It’s not true that all sequals are bad, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you should overlook original titles.

This is true both of games with big-budget developers and games with crews of maybe one or two people. Mirror’s Edge, for example, is a game by EA and DICE - two huge players - that I really do want to see more of. But then there’s other games by smaller developers, such as Audiosurf, Eufloria, Osmos, Zeno Clash and Dwarf Fortress that are incredible projects created by developers who don’t have an advertising budget, don’t have marketing machines, and probably aren’t able to live off soley their creations. And they should be supported too.

The best thing of all is, it’s even easier to support Indie titles and innovative games - as well as other full-budget blockbusters like GTAIV or Dragon Age: Origins - with digital download system such as Steam. I’ll get into why in a later article, but prices on Steam and Good Old Games are lower than in a bricks-and-mortar operation, and you don’t even have to leave your home.

3) Be less of a jerk online

Seriously.

4) Stop the Console Wars!

I’ve fought in the trenches, just like every other one of you apes. I was there in the Generation 5 conflict, back when it was Playstation against 64 against Dreamcast. I did my time during Generation 6, back when the newcomer Xbox was only just holding out against the might of the PS2 forces and the treacherous Gamecubians. But it’s time, fellas. A soldier can only fight for so long before he starts to question what he’s fighting for.

And the truth is, not a lot.

Sure, there are differences between the consoles. One’s made by an American company. One is Japanese, and therefore more hardcore - or less hardcore (I won’t name names). One’s more expensive, one’s less expensives, you can play Zelda on this one, you can shoot Covenant on this one. But in terms of the meaning of ‘fanboyism’ (or fangirlism; these are enlightened times, after all)… there isn’t much. It’s largely manufactured, you know; console exclusives, processing superiority, so on and so forth.

Part of the reason is economic. Generally speaking, most people can only afford one console. So the natural behaviour is to justify the reason that you bought that particular console. And part of that is denigrating all the other consoles. Man, why’d you buy a PS3? Don’t you know everything on the PS3 is available on the 360 anyway? Why’d you buy a Wii, girl, don’t you know that thing’s just two gamecubes stuck together with duct-tape? Why’d you get a 360, homeboy, that thing ain’t got no decent games for it! And the other part is, of course, claiming that your console is the best console that has ever existed.

Another part is also economic, on the part of the companies. I’m no economics student, so I’m not precisely sure how it works, but the basics of it are like this: people only have so much money that they’re willing to spend on videogames and associated products. Once people have something from this company, their tendency is to buy more stuff from that company for their console. So companies also tend to encourage fandom, because it’ll keep money going into their pockets.

And the last reason is merely sociological. It feels good for people to belong to a community of some kind; to have something in common with hundreds, thousands of other people. It’s a group mentality thing, and it’s difficult to escape.

But to be honest, there’s no point to the console wars. There’s no reason to feel superior over someone merely because they own another console, or they prefer to play that console. In a world increasingly overshadowed by external threats to our gaming ways - scare-mongering censors, economic crisis, and the dark world we know as ‘reality’ - why should we fragment and divide? We are gamers. We are all gamers, together. Peace, my brothers. The war is over.

Besides, we all know the PC is better than all of ‘em COMBINED. HOO-AHH!

(Image from iReap at DeviantART)