A Compulsively Dying Digital World

A reflection and reaction to the destruction imposed on the creativity and imagination so paramount to the world of gaming.

“F**k you, Activision.” “I blame EA for this bullshit.“

If you’ve ever tried to play any popular game online (such as one of the Call of Duty games or almost any Sports game) you’ve heard these words amongst a myriad of other random outcries and/or racial and social slurs while you and a party of other players watch a server crash miserably for absolutely no reason.  Would it be a fair assumption to say that the big company who owns the servers doesn’t really even care that is happening?  Yes, yes it would be.  Why?  Because they don’t care about their consumers, they care about making money and we’re all helping them do it.  Granted a large portion of stereotypical gamers are teenage boys, but oddly enough �" they don’t hold the majority.  That award goes to the 63% of women around the world between ages 28-65.  Are these women playing Xbox 360, PS3, or the Wii.  They may own one for their children or even themselves, but sadly no, they aren’t often frequenters of a console platform.  They play games like angry birds on their mobile phones or on Facebook.  And this is where we meet the real devil to the dying world of creative and imaginative games: Zynga.

If you first thought that large companies are a terrible thing, let me speak as an independent Game Studio owner and tell you: they aren’t a bad thing.  I love big studios.  They will help me by financially supporting my releases and even purchasing licensing from me.  I need them as much as they need me.  Larger companies don’t like to spend a lot of time and money on creating new ideas.  Instead they like to simply buy creative ideas that are successful.  Companies like Activision and Electronic Arts are greedy and simple-minded at best, but their outdated model of re-releasing the same titles with an unprecedented number of narrow-minded sequels makes creative and original titles from independent developers look that much better in contrast.  Companies like Microsoft support and help independent developers in other ways.  Now because of those efforts, it’s become reasonable for someone like myself to start and run a game studio and with the right ideas and releases and actually become a successful enterprise.  So with all of these benefits, why are companies like EA, Activision, and the fateful Zynga killing game designers like myself?  For different reason that all come down to simple greed.

Activision and Electronic Arts, known best for games like Guitar Hero and NFL 2012, are flooding the market.  While the contrast in gameplay may make a game released by someone like myself that much cooler, it makes it that much harder to companies with limited funding to get their game noticed.  Often times, it takes a few under-the-counter bribes and a TON of pestering emails to even get a review posted in the back logs of a popular gaming magazine or website.  And then, unless you’ve come up with something that really stands out, you really have to start pulling the handfuls of sweaty cash out to get a good or even just a noticeable review.  While Electronic Arts and Activision have entire buildings in several cities dedicated to advertising and PR, most independent companies have whatever the internet and word of mouth can afford them.  Activision and EA have the same mantra they go by: “Don’t sell a game unless you can sell a multitude of sequels and follow-ups on the same name.”

While EA and Activision are destroying what it means to be a game designer, the real dilemma is the company Zynga.  If you’ve ever played a game on Facebook, you know who Zynga is.  They have the games like Mafia Wars and Farmville, and they have introduced the “Freemium” mechanic to gaming culture.  The “Freemium” gimmick isn’t an issue.  In fact, providing a freely playable core game with premium content for purchase or Ad-Support is a great mechanic for independent developers to make a start with.  And, for the gamers it is overall an easy and affordable gaming experience.  Here is the real problem, though: Zynga’s unbelievable mission statement: “We don’t want or support innovation and creativity.  Just copy everything our competitors are doing as much as possible and sell it cheaper with our name on it.”  This is not a new concept to business, but creative design is NOT the same thing as cereal.  And here lies the problem: Zynga is a $6.2 billion company, what chance does an independent game studio have against a company that will simply recreate anything you would publish to try and compete with it?  Even worse, companies like Activision and EA have seen this success and are now trying to mimic this process for console and PC games.  It’s fruitless to ask for a boycott, because so many people just care more about playing their stupid game than saving some dying part of our entertainment industry.  Hollywood is going quickly down the same path.  We’re seeing remakes of movies that were remakes originally.  Hell, we’re even seeing a remake of Spider-Man, one of the highest grossing films ever, and it isn’t even outdated yet.  Point being, the world of creative and imaginative games is dying because independent developers are fighting a losing battle to mass-direction.