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Walking to work today, I passed a games store in the highstreet being set up. At the moment it is only some empty shelves, and a full-sized cardboard cutout of a very full-chested woman straddling a bike, advertising the game BMX-XXX. This reminded me of a feature I read in Edge the other day, about an RPG Climax were making. They polled some local teenagers about what they wanted to see in the game, and the majority response they got was that it needed more T&A. Work it out :O)
Breasts have been a growing trend (pun intended) in videogames since Lara Croft. If a new game these days has a female lead, you can guess to a reasonable degree of accuracy her vital statistics and inappropriate clothing. Soon we get to play beach volleyball with the notoriously voluptuous Dead or Alive characters, no doubt complete with a one-handed option. Presumably some bright spark is already working on a soft porn game (however expect it to be delayed because of developers needing 'toilet breaks'). An industry that once churned out cutesy platformer after cutesy platformer is growing up with its market - the 12 year olds that bought Super Mario Kart in 1994 are now 20, and 20 year old young men like sex and violence.
This is largely Sonys doing. Sony spent the 80's marketing the Walkman as an essential accessory for the trendy youth about town, a way to take your music, your youth and your freedom wherever you go. Given the opportunity to enter the console market, Sony saw that their expertise in marketing could help them win big. Nintendo, who had up until then been selling games pitched at 10 year olds, could not compete with the Playstation brand's instantly trendy image. Sony seized the market, and Sony ran with it. No longer were elves, plumbers and primary colours the staple diet of gaming. The Playstation was a brand that young adults could associate themselves with and not feel embarassed. This above everything else is what handed Sony the videogame market.
In the last six to eight years we've seen a shift from games being produced for children, to games designed and marketed towards young adults. Some might argue that the industry is maturing. More likely though, is that this is market forces in progress - videogaming has sniffed out a bigger revenue stream, and is busy exploiting it. Nintendo is still selling to the younger generation, it's traditional demographic, while Sony and Microsoft heave and struggle over the twenty-somethings.
So where next? Has videogaming settled down as a mature artform? Hardly. As I tell a lot of the retards that troll the Nintendo forum, it is hardly logical to base your decision about which games you play on such superfluous details as whether it has a bird with big t*ts in it, or whether you can get your hands on a sniper rifle. Good games are good games, whether they're a cutesy platformer or a blood-bath set in London. To deny yourself access to good games, to disassociate from some titles because they're not mature enough is, well, immature really. Console gaming has always seemed to grow with me - I played Super Mario Bros on the NES when I was 6, Street Fighter II kept me amused when I was 13, and now I'm 22 I can get hold of some seriously realistic killing. I don't think the trend is going to continue much further - certainly I don't want to be playing decorating sims when I'm 30, or participating in online tea-drinking deathmatches at 50. All games, be they sports, board games or videogames, are mostly played by children, and that is the way it will always be. I don't think videogaming will ever really make it to middle age - sure many people will still be playing games when they're 35, but many more will not. Gaming will thrash around the 20 somethings, looking for more ways to extract the pound and the dollar from the pockets of the young trendies with cash to spare. They are where the money is, they are where the fashion is, and they are who videogaming will ultimately stick to.
Breasts have been a growing trend (pun intended) in videogames since Lara Croft. If a new game these days has a female lead, you can guess to a reasonable degree of accuracy her vital statistics and inappropriate clothing. Soon we get to play beach volleyball with the notoriously voluptuous Dead or Alive characters, no doubt complete with a one-handed option. Presumably some bright spark is already working on a soft porn game (however expect it to be delayed because of developers needing 'toilet breaks'). An industry that once churned out cutesy platformer after cutesy platformer is growing up with its market - the 12 year olds that bought Super Mario Kart in 1994 are now 20, and 20 year old young men like sex and violence.
This is largely Sonys doing. Sony spent the 80's marketing the Walkman as an essential accessory for the trendy youth about town, a way to take your music, your youth and your freedom wherever you go. Given the opportunity to enter the console market, Sony saw that their expertise in marketing could help them win big. Nintendo, who had up until then been selling games pitched at 10 year olds, could not compete with the Playstation brand's instantly trendy image. Sony seized the market, and Sony ran with it. No longer were elves, plumbers and primary colours the staple diet of gaming. The Playstation was a brand that young adults could associate themselves with and not feel embarassed. This above everything else is what handed Sony the videogame market.
In the last six to eight years we've seen a shift from games being produced for children, to games designed and marketed towards young adults. Some might argue that the industry is maturing. More likely though, is that this is market forces in progress - videogaming has sniffed out a bigger revenue stream, and is busy exploiting it. Nintendo is still selling to the younger generation, it's traditional demographic, while Sony and Microsoft heave and struggle over the twenty-somethings.
So where next? Has videogaming settled down as a mature artform? Hardly. As I tell a lot of the retards that troll the Nintendo forum, it is hardly logical to base your decision about which games you play on such superfluous details as whether it has a bird with big t*ts in it, or whether you can get your hands on a sniper rifle. Good games are good games, whether they're a cutesy platformer or a blood-bath set in London. To deny yourself access to good games, to disassociate from some titles because they're not mature enough is, well, immature really. Console gaming has always seemed to grow with me - I played Super Mario Bros on the NES when I was 6, Street Fighter II kept me amused when I was 13, and now I'm 22 I can get hold of some seriously realistic killing. I don't think the trend is going to continue much further - certainly I don't want to be playing decorating sims when I'm 30, or participating in online tea-drinking deathmatches at 50. All games, be they sports, board games or videogames, are mostly played by children, and that is the way it will always be. I don't think videogaming will ever really make it to middle age - sure many people will still be playing games when they're 35, but many more will not. Gaming will thrash around the 20 somethings, looking for more ways to extract the pound and the dollar from the pockets of the young trendies with cash to spare. They are where the money is, they are where the fashion is, and they are who videogaming will ultimately stick to.
Armatige Shanks wrote:
> Not really... I can't imagine any would ever consider Pop Music an art
> form.
I think a lot of people already do. Not the manufactured pap that dominates the charts these days, but there have been loads of truly popular music genres that are considered as art forms. Jazz was incredibly popular, and now people treat it with the same kind of reverence as classical music. American soul also managed to be commercially popular and artistically brilliant. Same with reggae in Jamaica, where the most insane and creative music was also the most popular. Wait another ten years and house and hip-hop will be art forms too.
> Not really... I can't imagine any would ever consider Pop Music an art
> form.
I think a lot of people already do. Not the manufactured pap that dominates the charts these days, but there have been loads of truly popular music genres that are considered as art forms. Jazz was incredibly popular, and now people treat it with the same kind of reverence as classical music. American soul also managed to be commercially popular and artistically brilliant. Same with reggae in Jamaica, where the most insane and creative music was also the most popular. Wait another ten years and house and hip-hop will be art forms too.
unknown kernel wrote:
> First of all, they want games to be taken seriously, to be considered
> an art form as relevant and important as pop music or cinema. Fair
> enough.
Not really... I can't imagine any would ever consider Pop Music an art form.
Don't forget, both Movies and Music came to prominence on the premice of making money... Any artistic off-shoots came about much later, surviving for a long time, and still to a limited extent, on the sidelines.
Gaming as an artform is still a very long way off, not because of the limitations of the technology, but because of the limitations of the developers, and the limitations of cutural recognition.
It would be smarter, for now, to work on gaming to be considered as valid a business as either music or movies. On which for the moment any success can be accredited less to anything the industry iteself has done, but on the desent of respect and monetary vaule of the popular music industry.
> First of all, they want games to be taken seriously, to be considered
> an art form as relevant and important as pop music or cinema. Fair
> enough.
Not really... I can't imagine any would ever consider Pop Music an art form.
Don't forget, both Movies and Music came to prominence on the premice of making money... Any artistic off-shoots came about much later, surviving for a long time, and still to a limited extent, on the sidelines.
Gaming as an artform is still a very long way off, not because of the limitations of the technology, but because of the limitations of the developers, and the limitations of cutural recognition.
It would be smarter, for now, to work on gaming to be considered as valid a business as either music or movies. On which for the moment any success can be accredited less to anything the industry iteself has done, but on the desent of respect and monetary vaule of the popular music industry.
Naa... having characters with large breasts don't show that the marktet is maturing... it just shows that distributers are aware that teenage boys like to stare at boobies :)
There have been pornographic games almost since the begining, the Speccy, C64, even the Atari2600 all had porn/boob based titles.
The same can be said for 'extreame' violence titles, their nothing new, and certainly not 'mature', just another way of marketing naff titles to horney kids?
There have been pornographic games almost since the begining, the Speccy, C64, even the Atari2600 all had porn/boob based titles.
The same can be said for 'extreame' violence titles, their nothing new, and certainly not 'mature', just another way of marketing naff titles to horney kids?
unknown kernel wrote:
> Way, way more than I meant to write. So, just quickly, the other
> thing that bugs me about Edge: editorial condemnation of T&A
> culture vs. recruitment ads in back of mag featuring more T&A than
> the Daily Star.
The recruitment section of Edge is about as much proof as one needs of how stale the industry can be sometimes.
> Way, way more than I meant to write. So, just quickly, the other
> thing that bugs me about Edge: editorial condemnation of T&A
> culture vs. recruitment ads in back of mag featuring more T&A than
> the Daily Star.
The recruitment section of Edge is about as much proof as one needs of how stale the industry can be sometimes.
I read that in Edge too. In fact I read Edge pretty religiously, and its the only magazine whose reviews I trust. A couple of things bug me about the magazine, though, and they are both sort of connected to the theme of gaming growing up.
First of all, they want games to be taken seriously, to be considered an art form as relevant and important as pop music or cinema. Fair enough. There's no denying that games have that same magical quality - the almost intangible way that Mario is better than Blinx, or the way that one FPS enthralls while another bores. It's tough to explain, but we know when one game is better than another, and we know that technical brilliance is never enough - and that's a hallmark of art. And we know, too, that games like Ico or Rez are a mile removed from the early titles that delivered adrenaline, and adrenaline alone. Whether or not games will ever tell us anything about ourselves, other than the fact that we like to play, I just don't know; but it will be fun finding out.
What bugs me about Edge, though, is that while they are happy to castigate the media for portraying gaming as just dumb fun, they do pretty much the same thing themselves. Sure they dress things up in pretty words and an encylopaedic knowledge of games, but when it comes to engaging critically with gaming they run scared. I remember a couple of issues ago there was a letter from someone complaining that a Gulf War game and the imminent spate of Vietnam War titles were tested merely as games, and nothing more. No comment about the political overtones, or the relegation of opposition soldiers to faceless 'gooks' and Arabs that had to be killed to bring our squaddies safely back home. Edge's response was something along the lines of 'ooh, but it's just a game', which I found just a little pathetic. Do we judge Nazi propaganda films on their cinematic merit, or do we look at their context, and the ideals they supported?
If you want proof that games are about more than gameplay look at GTA. Would we accept such a dreadful camera, and such terrible combat mechanics from any other game? No, we'd tear it to shreds. But GTA has that little bit extra: the horrible, misanthropic world it has created - and the exhilarating robbing and killing that so naturally goes with it - that manages to be a better and more brutal satire on our world than anything our asinine media could hope to produce. Sure the game is brilliant fun, but it's the *idea* of Vice City that kept me hooked.
Way, way more than I meant to write. So, just quickly, the other thing that bugs me about Edge: editorial condemnation of T&A culture vs. recruitment ads in back of mag featuring more T&A than the Daily Star.
First of all, they want games to be taken seriously, to be considered an art form as relevant and important as pop music or cinema. Fair enough. There's no denying that games have that same magical quality - the almost intangible way that Mario is better than Blinx, or the way that one FPS enthralls while another bores. It's tough to explain, but we know when one game is better than another, and we know that technical brilliance is never enough - and that's a hallmark of art. And we know, too, that games like Ico or Rez are a mile removed from the early titles that delivered adrenaline, and adrenaline alone. Whether or not games will ever tell us anything about ourselves, other than the fact that we like to play, I just don't know; but it will be fun finding out.
What bugs me about Edge, though, is that while they are happy to castigate the media for portraying gaming as just dumb fun, they do pretty much the same thing themselves. Sure they dress things up in pretty words and an encylopaedic knowledge of games, but when it comes to engaging critically with gaming they run scared. I remember a couple of issues ago there was a letter from someone complaining that a Gulf War game and the imminent spate of Vietnam War titles were tested merely as games, and nothing more. No comment about the political overtones, or the relegation of opposition soldiers to faceless 'gooks' and Arabs that had to be killed to bring our squaddies safely back home. Edge's response was something along the lines of 'ooh, but it's just a game', which I found just a little pathetic. Do we judge Nazi propaganda films on their cinematic merit, or do we look at their context, and the ideals they supported?
If you want proof that games are about more than gameplay look at GTA. Would we accept such a dreadful camera, and such terrible combat mechanics from any other game? No, we'd tear it to shreds. But GTA has that little bit extra: the horrible, misanthropic world it has created - and the exhilarating robbing and killing that so naturally goes with it - that manages to be a better and more brutal satire on our world than anything our asinine media could hope to produce. Sure the game is brilliant fun, but it's the *idea* of Vice City that kept me hooked.
Way, way more than I meant to write. So, just quickly, the other thing that bugs me about Edge: editorial condemnation of T&A culture vs. recruitment ads in back of mag featuring more T&A than the Daily Star.
I know, that is how GC got it's kiddy reputation.
This has been done by various people but still a valid point.
I think video games are no longer for kids, adults play them too and devlelopers are expanding on that market, basically.
I think video games are no longer for kids, adults play them too and devlelopers are expanding on that market, basically.
Walking to work today, I passed a games store in the highstreet being set up. At the moment it is only some empty shelves, and a full-sized cardboard cutout of a very full-chested woman straddling a bike, advertising the game BMX-XXX. This reminded me of a feature I read in Edge the other day, about an RPG Climax were making. They polled some local teenagers about what they wanted to see in the game, and the majority response they got was that it needed more T&A. Work it out :O)
Breasts have been a growing trend (pun intended) in videogames since Lara Croft. If a new game these days has a female lead, you can guess to a reasonable degree of accuracy her vital statistics and inappropriate clothing. Soon we get to play beach volleyball with the notoriously voluptuous Dead or Alive characters, no doubt complete with a one-handed option. Presumably some bright spark is already working on a soft porn game (however expect it to be delayed because of developers needing 'toilet breaks'). An industry that once churned out cutesy platformer after cutesy platformer is growing up with its market - the 12 year olds that bought Super Mario Kart in 1994 are now 20, and 20 year old young men like sex and violence.
This is largely Sonys doing. Sony spent the 80's marketing the Walkman as an essential accessory for the trendy youth about town, a way to take your music, your youth and your freedom wherever you go. Given the opportunity to enter the console market, Sony saw that their expertise in marketing could help them win big. Nintendo, who had up until then been selling games pitched at 10 year olds, could not compete with the Playstation brand's instantly trendy image. Sony seized the market, and Sony ran with it. No longer were elves, plumbers and primary colours the staple diet of gaming. The Playstation was a brand that young adults could associate themselves with and not feel embarassed. This above everything else is what handed Sony the videogame market.
In the last six to eight years we've seen a shift from games being produced for children, to games designed and marketed towards young adults. Some might argue that the industry is maturing. More likely though, is that this is market forces in progress - videogaming has sniffed out a bigger revenue stream, and is busy exploiting it. Nintendo is still selling to the younger generation, it's traditional demographic, while Sony and Microsoft heave and struggle over the twenty-somethings.
So where next? Has videogaming settled down as a mature artform? Hardly. As I tell a lot of the retards that troll the Nintendo forum, it is hardly logical to base your decision about which games you play on such superfluous details as whether it has a bird with big t*ts in it, or whether you can get your hands on a sniper rifle. Good games are good games, whether they're a cutesy platformer or a blood-bath set in London. To deny yourself access to good games, to disassociate from some titles because they're not mature enough is, well, immature really. Console gaming has always seemed to grow with me - I played Super Mario Bros on the NES when I was 6, Street Fighter II kept me amused when I was 13, and now I'm 22 I can get hold of some seriously realistic killing. I don't think the trend is going to continue much further - certainly I don't want to be playing decorating sims when I'm 30, or participating in online tea-drinking deathmatches at 50. All games, be they sports, board games or videogames, are mostly played by children, and that is the way it will always be. I don't think videogaming will ever really make it to middle age - sure many people will still be playing games when they're 35, but many more will not. Gaming will thrash around the 20 somethings, looking for more ways to extract the pound and the dollar from the pockets of the young trendies with cash to spare. They are where the money is, they are where the fashion is, and they are who videogaming will ultimately stick to.
Breasts have been a growing trend (pun intended) in videogames since Lara Croft. If a new game these days has a female lead, you can guess to a reasonable degree of accuracy her vital statistics and inappropriate clothing. Soon we get to play beach volleyball with the notoriously voluptuous Dead or Alive characters, no doubt complete with a one-handed option. Presumably some bright spark is already working on a soft porn game (however expect it to be delayed because of developers needing 'toilet breaks'). An industry that once churned out cutesy platformer after cutesy platformer is growing up with its market - the 12 year olds that bought Super Mario Kart in 1994 are now 20, and 20 year old young men like sex and violence.
This is largely Sonys doing. Sony spent the 80's marketing the Walkman as an essential accessory for the trendy youth about town, a way to take your music, your youth and your freedom wherever you go. Given the opportunity to enter the console market, Sony saw that their expertise in marketing could help them win big. Nintendo, who had up until then been selling games pitched at 10 year olds, could not compete with the Playstation brand's instantly trendy image. Sony seized the market, and Sony ran with it. No longer were elves, plumbers and primary colours the staple diet of gaming. The Playstation was a brand that young adults could associate themselves with and not feel embarassed. This above everything else is what handed Sony the videogame market.
In the last six to eight years we've seen a shift from games being produced for children, to games designed and marketed towards young adults. Some might argue that the industry is maturing. More likely though, is that this is market forces in progress - videogaming has sniffed out a bigger revenue stream, and is busy exploiting it. Nintendo is still selling to the younger generation, it's traditional demographic, while Sony and Microsoft heave and struggle over the twenty-somethings.
So where next? Has videogaming settled down as a mature artform? Hardly. As I tell a lot of the retards that troll the Nintendo forum, it is hardly logical to base your decision about which games you play on such superfluous details as whether it has a bird with big t*ts in it, or whether you can get your hands on a sniper rifle. Good games are good games, whether they're a cutesy platformer or a blood-bath set in London. To deny yourself access to good games, to disassociate from some titles because they're not mature enough is, well, immature really. Console gaming has always seemed to grow with me - I played Super Mario Bros on the NES when I was 6, Street Fighter II kept me amused when I was 13, and now I'm 22 I can get hold of some seriously realistic killing. I don't think the trend is going to continue much further - certainly I don't want to be playing decorating sims when I'm 30, or participating in online tea-drinking deathmatches at 50. All games, be they sports, board games or videogames, are mostly played by children, and that is the way it will always be. I don't think videogaming will ever really make it to middle age - sure many people will still be playing games when they're 35, but many more will not. Gaming will thrash around the 20 somethings, looking for more ways to extract the pound and the dollar from the pockets of the young trendies with cash to spare. They are where the money is, they are where the fashion is, and they are who videogaming will ultimately stick to.