Criticism for the Video Game Industry: Introduction

Hello everyone,

For those of you who check out LevelSave regularly, you might have seen a few of my articles floating around. If not, my name is Adam Shear and I have been writing and podcasting about video games for over six years. I have also been a fan of the video game industry for at least ten years. Over this decade of time, I have seen plenty of trends, highs, and lows. I’ve done plenty of research on the full history of the video game industry. I have also seen plenty of hate and negativity towards video games by the general public. I define the general public as just the average citizen, someone who tries to follow mainstream trends which is the fancy way of saying it is someone who tries to stay cool and up to date. Over the years, I have heard so many things from people of all walks of life. A few years ago, even congress tried to regulate the sales of video games and in the process, attempted to violate the first amendment of the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech. Music is popular, movies are popular, television is popular, and books are popular. In my opinion, video games are not popular and I do not consider video games to be mainstream. The average person knows who Justin Bieber is, knows of Iron Man because of the movies and cartoons, not necessarily the comic books, and has at least heard of Harry Potter. Unfortunately, I don’t think the average person could recognize famous video game characters such as Solid Snake, Nathan Drake, or Master Chief by both picture and name. Very few video game characters are universally recognizable by the general public including Mario, Pac-Man, and the birds from Angry Birds. And by the way, these findings are actually based off questions I asked various people from different age groups and backgrounds.

I really don’t want to sound pessimistic. This is the cold hard truth the industry and its fans need now more than ever. I absolutely love video games. They are one of my favorite things in the world. I’m just really sad that a lot of people are missing out on something amazing. Most video games are in the same boat as comic books. Most games aside from mainstream games like Madden and Call of Duty are bought only by a niche group of hardcore gamers. Comic books can survive on a niche group of fans because they are significantly cheaper to produce than video games. It also helps that there are probably more hardcore gamers than there are hardcore comic book fans. More people enjoying video games means that in the future: gamers might get more innovative games and experiences, the average prices of games and game consoles might decrease, and there will be more jobs in the video game industry, and working in it is a dream of many hardcore gamers.

The idea of video games are so cool. Video games are the only type of entertainment that are active rather than passive. This means a person gets to enter a new world, make their own decisions within that world, and experience something they would never get to experience in their reality. Rather than watching something, a person can instead be something and do something while sitting on their couch. Video games are something that can appeal to every age, gender, and culture.

To quote the famous Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream”. I have a dream, that one day, I can walk down the street and hear people from many different walks of life talking about the latest video games, just as the average person does the night after watching a TV show or reading a good book. I want to see the day where someone who loves video games is not stereotyped as a virgin loser who lives in their mom’s basement (most are really not like that).

In order for this dream to be a reality, there has to be serious change in the video game industry. I love the video game industry, but at the same time, I have so many problems with it. There are plenty of reasons why video games never caught on like movies or TV did. These problems make video games very unappealing to the general public and many games are starting to be even less appealing to myself. Over the next several weeks, I will be tackling each of my many issues with the video game industry. Some of the ones I will tackle include, but are not limited to:

“Overviolence”
Lack of innovation and universal appeal in software
Price of entry (hardware)
Price of software
Lack of smart marketing
“Just for the fans”
Intimidating interfaces
More content than most can handle
Lack of “interactive experiences” and applications

I hope you guys will enjoy this long feature. One new piece will be published every week, starting next week. While I love video games now, many things have to change in order for the possibilities of video games to become bigger and brighter. I would really appreciate any kind of feedback through the comments below. I hope you guys look forward to this.