Thursday, August 21, 2008

Blog Banter #7: Quality over quantity any day of the week


Welcome, welcome to the 7th installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza normally headed by bs angel , and for this issue by Terry Bosky of the Game Couch. Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

From CrazyKinux (that's me!): Does every game need to be a grade-A blockbuster title? Would you be willing to play more average games or should every game shoot for the 10.0 rating?

My quick and dirty answer to the first question would be no, give me quality over quantity any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. And these days, blockbuster does not necessarily mean a great gaming experience. Two things are most valuable to me, money (obviously), but most of all time!

The former is easily explained. At $60 a game, I better enjoy what I give in exchange for my blood, sweat and tears. But it's the latter that's really at the heart of my answer. I'm a gamer, I'm a husband, I'm a dad (and definitely not in that order, yes dear I know!!) , and if there's one thing I don't have too much of it's time. So please Mr Publisher/Developer, don't waste it. I have a long term memory and will remember if you try to feed me crap.

Lets take this from a different point of view. Take 10 seconds to go and check your game collection, PC, console, handheld, whatever! OK, you're back? Good. Now, how many of those games have you finished? Far from all of them right? So let me ask you this, would you have preferred having had bought less of them, if the ones you did get were so great you couldn't put down the controller or remove you hand from the k/b? If you had finished all of those. Probably right? I mean, what was so great about that next game that made you put down the one you were playing?

At 60 bucks a pop, I'd rather get a gourmet dinner then a buffet. I'd rather savor each digital byte, then to force feed myself tons of polygons and pixels. So please, lets add some variety to the diet here!

So quality over quantity , and that means originality over pre-digested oatmeal.

To answer that second question, no I'd rather you take your time and aim for something original, tasteful. I'd love to be surprised Mr. Developer, which these days rarely happens. I'm not necessarily asking for a perfect 10, but lets have some diversity.

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Blog Banter Participants: Zath!, Delayed Responsibility, Silvercublogger, weblog.probablynot.com, Crazy Kinux, Gamer-Unit, Unfettered Blather, MasterKitty, XboxOZ360, Omnivangelist, Lou Chou Loves You, Game Couch

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

For every game you think they wasted their time on, or should have spent more time developing, there is someone out there who loved it the way it is. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so to speak.

Anonymous said...

lol! I loved this article, added a bit of humor to it. Yes dear. Priceless :)

I love my Sunday Gaming too.

It's nice too see Rare release games at $39.99 though - their upcoming Viva Pinata 2 and Banjo Kazooie are both at that price point. Awesome!

CrazyKinux said...

@silvercube - I'm lucky that I can get away with 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. Thus I tend to blog after we've put our daughter to bed (8ish), then play EVE or Gears of War and other games after my better-half has gone off to get some ZZzzs (9 or 10ish). Works for us!

Anonymous said...

Your post reminded me that it's a shame that episodic gaming never took off. And forget about games I haven't finished, I have PC games I've never touched. Damn you cheap shelf at Target!

CrazyKinux said...

@Terry - That reminds me; I need to install Command & Conquer: Generals, which I bought last week.

deckard47 said...

@Terry- I dunno if you've checked the new Alone in the Dark out, but it's an interesting take on episodic games. Not great, by any means, but still worth checking out.

Anonymous said...

Right on and thank God for demos!

I once saw boxes of Contract J.A.C.K. in the bargain bin of a local store. They were priced a little less than $4. Rather than buy the game immediately, I opted to play its demo.

It sucked big time and there was no "NOLF" feel in any of the three or so levels the demo contained.

With its bad gameplay, no way I could have finished the game if I had bought it.

Anonymous said...

@Shazbot Loving NOLF, I played Contract J.A.C.K. and was sorely disappointed. Weirdly, the one thing I remember was that each enemy took 1/2 an ammo clip to kill.