The lights are on
Usually, I try to take a couple of days to sort out what I want to say before I start blogging. But this time, the topic that has been ruling my thoughts is one that hits so close to home that no forethought was necessary. What really gave me the urge to write something was a video blog from Adam Sessler over at G4TV. I always enjoy Sessler's dialogue because he strikes me as one of the few people who truly loves gaming and is in the industry for all the right reasons.
In recent years, it seems that the game industry has become quite fond of rehashing old material. Yes, much like Hollywood's recent wave of "gritty" reboots and remakes, video games have seen a flood of "HD re-releases", stale sequels, and disappointing remakes. It all makes sense from a certain standpoint. The generation that grew up watching Go Bots, Transformers, He-Man, GI Joe and Thundercats are now adults, and popular culture is being influenced by all the things we fondly remember from the past. But maybe our memories of "simpler times" is not entirely, well... the way we remember it.
I had never really thought about it, until then. Let me take you back to the year 2000. People are raving about The Matrix and how it will change movies forever. Many were still trying to figure out the underlying themes and implications within the film. There was so much hype surrounding the movie itself, that dozens of low-budget copycat movies were released within the same time period, complete with cheesy B-actors and godawful CGI.
In recent years, I have noticed a trend in the video games industry that seems to have become more and more prevalent. That is, the requests, desires, concerns of gamers being minimized or outright ignored. Amongst the first that comes to mind with this is good ol' Nintendo, the folks that pretty much got all of us hooked on games to begin with.
I can't remember a more promising, or more frustrating time in gaming as right now. I've been obsessed with video games since the days of the Commodore 64, and I've seen a lot of changes. Most of those years were filled with the excitement of seeing technology grow a