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"All hail mass-market mediocrity."

As I lay in bed last night having played Ikaruga some time earlier, I thought about why quality games like that aren’t seen in the all-formats charts. Then I remembered that in general, the games buying public is stupid.
There is no finer an example than Enter the Matrix.
Some say it’s great, some say it’s crap, but no matter your opinion, the game is currently flying off the shelves and will sit proudly atop the charts for some considerable time no doubt.
But the common consensus is that the game is poor (I don’t know about you, but no reviews available before launch smelt pretty fishy to me), so why is it number 1? Hype and the gullibility of blinded mass-market zealots are the number one suspects.

I’m looking forward to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines as I’m a big fan of the series and of the Austrian Oak himself, but will I buy the game if it looks crap? No, no I won’t. So why so many people are buying a crap game baffles me.
-“But it’s the Matrix, you can do kung fu.” Never heard of Street Fighter or its modern successors?
-“There’s two cool characters whose levels intertwine with the film.” So, two uninteresting characters adding depth to a highly overrated film, big deal.
-“You can do hacking.” So, buy a crummy flat and a load of computer equipment and try the real thing.
-“It’s fun.” So is Zelda: The Wind Waker, so is Ico, so is Rez. They are fun beyond belief, but did they sell shed load of copies? Nope.
-“It’s cool.” The killer line. What does “cool” have to do with the quality of the game? Absolutely nothing, it’s the thing most people are influenced by. It’s definitely *not* cool. In fact, it’s so bad I’d call it uncool.

In the end, the mass buying of a poor product like Enter the Matrix will ruin the games industry. Think of it; you have enough money for one game. You browse the shelves and see two games: Enter the Matrix and SOS: The Final Escape on PS2.
Which do you choose, the hyped up film conversion that relies on the movie to influence geeky zealots, or a highly original, though pretty much unheard of title?
It seems the majority like their healthy dose of mass-market mediocrity and are willing to ignore little gaming gems.
The problem with this is money. Eventually, smaller games companies *will* go out of business because of this sort of ignorant buying. It has already happened with a number of veteran games companies, and will happen more and more when people favour games like Enter the Matrix over better, more original games. Just by the fact that Nintendo, undoubtedly the greatest developer, is struggling proves that the majority of gamers don’t favour great games but mass-market rubbish instead.

The success of Enter the Matrix will also prove that instead of spending time and huge effort in creating an amazing piece of software, games companies can just get a movie license and churn out a poor rushed game to coincide with the film’s release and that will sell due to the name of the movie alone. This will happen more and more leading to plenty more mediocrity instead of well-made titles.

At the end of the day, you’re not just going to ruin the games industry for yourselves, but you’ll ruin it for me too, someone who doesn’t buy into the hype of your Enter the Matrix, FIFA or Lord of the Rings cash-ins, someone who favours SOS: The Final Escape over generic shallow crap pumped out for healthy profit. But that’s the way the games industry will go.

I can just imagine the games industry in 5 years time, with the charts filled up with crap sequels and movie tie-ins, and no Nintendo or other sparks of flair or originality to be seen, still, if that’s the way you want it. In 5 years time when you realise the poor state of the industry, just remember that it was the success of Enter the Matrix that planted the seeds of mediocrity and that whoever was foolish enough to buy it was partly responsible.

*slow hand clap for blinded zealots*

Enjoy playing Enter the Matrix, and enjoy the downward spiral in quality it represents.

FantasyMeister wrote:
Electronic Arts who then
> brought out Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which is one of
> the most fun games I've played in a LONG time.

Someone else over 12 enjoyed it as well, woohoo.

Tis a suprisingly enjoyable game given the license. Especially like the flying sections on the broomstick outside of Hogwarts, will get round to completing it some time.

Well it was always going to happen. Generally big companies make a lot of rubbish games but they sell loads because they are advertised. If they had to get a decent dev team in it would eat the profit margins. Once games came out of the tape based computer and the home programmer then they were always going to go downhill in imagination stakes.

enter the matrix looks wicked. my bro has it and im considering getting it off ebay for my PC.

Tiltawhirl wrote:
> Totoro wrote:
>
> I wrote the original topic very early this morning as I was forced
> up at an ungodly hour due to forces beyond my control,
>
> Morning sickness?

Close, it involved looking after a small child and having to sit through an episode of ChuckleVision with her.

*points*

See, see? See what evil corporate giants EA have done to FantasyMeister? My God you're right!

P.S. I'm using FIFA as an example, I've got nothing against the series personally despite only ever having owned FIFA '98 on the PlayStation. But it's nice to know that my money went to Electronic Arts who then brought out Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which is one of the most fun games I've played in a LONG time.

So what you're basically saying in this thread is:

We shouldn't buy games just because of the hype.

Fair enough, but consider this, if Shiny Entertainment hadn't produced Enter The Matrix, would they now have the money to go on and develop more great and original titles like the ones they used to? Like Earthworm Jim, MDK, R/C Stunt 'Copter and Messiah?

There's a lot of crud games out there, but if they finance the highly original stuff that developers really want to push out then I'm quite happy for people to continue to buy FIFA after FIFA.

Games programmers want to play good games, sometimes their allowed to make them. There will always be good games aslong as people want to play them.

The idea of the “blinded zealot” was that people are too caught up in the hype surrounding the new Matrix film, that they blindly bought the game regardless of the quality of it. Enter the Matrix *could* have been much better, and if it had of been I would have thought about getting it for the combat, bullet time, aforementioned lesbian kissing etc, but because it still sold loads, the actual quality of the title doesn’t really matter to the moneymen as they made their cash. It may result in more sloppy titles being launched that could have been better games, which will be a shame.

Mr Snuggly wrote:
> Any company that releases a niche game on the same day as a release
> with the stature of Enter The Matrix deserves to go out of business,
> it's bad business - sad, but true.

Actually, you're bloody right there!