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Gaming News: "Selective Hearing"
Posted: Friday February 10th, 2006
by
At this year's D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Conference, David Jaffe, director of the critically acclaimed God of War, addressed the game industry's problem of having a ton of "craftspeople" making "compelling content" but not having "a lot of writers and directors who bring creativity to the process". He likened this "dilemma" to that of the porn industry. But, being gamers, one word in that commentary really got our attention. I'm pretty sure that was the point.
Source: Gamespot [ more info ]
Where using the "porn" to get attention wasn't really his express purpose, he was making a rather poignant analogy, Gamespot did a pretty good job of connecting the dots for him. From my perspective, the forums here are proof enough of the concept. Everyone seems to perk up when anything relating to sex is posted.
Hey, I'm not faulting anyone here. I don't see anything wrong with it. Interest in sex is, in the right circumstances, a good thing. We kinda would have gone extinct otherwise right?
But, not to undermine Jaffe's intent, he's got a good point. The porn industry tends to undercut their medium, skipping straight to the reason for their production. No frills, no excuses, and the barest minimum of effort in a direction to make the entire thing cohesive, because that's all we seem to require of them. And the gaming industry has somewhat of the same problem. Certain large game companies whip out rehashed garbage for the sake of putting games in our hands. They hit the main reasons we play games, and gloss over the finer points that make a title truly engaging.
So, Jaffe's "question" to the game industry rings a chord that I think those large companies are def to. That is to say, like a dog whistle, the only being that responds to it is the very being that is inclined to hear it in the first place. For the sake of clarifying this example, I'm refering to smaller, independant game companies that are already striving to generate games that have the absolute hiest production values in every aspect of a game. Funny thing is, those tend to be the games that get completely overlooked.
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Source: Gamespot [ more info ]
Where using the "porn" to get attention wasn't really his express purpose, he was making a rather poignant analogy, Gamespot did a pretty good job of connecting the dots for him. From my perspective, the forums here are proof enough of the concept. Everyone seems to perk up when anything relating to sex is posted.
Hey, I'm not faulting anyone here. I don't see anything wrong with it. Interest in sex is, in the right circumstances, a good thing. We kinda would have gone extinct otherwise right?
But, not to undermine Jaffe's intent, he's got a good point. The porn industry tends to undercut their medium, skipping straight to the reason for their production. No frills, no excuses, and the barest minimum of effort in a direction to make the entire thing cohesive, because that's all we seem to require of them. And the gaming industry has somewhat of the same problem. Certain large game companies whip out rehashed garbage for the sake of putting games in our hands. They hit the main reasons we play games, and gloss over the finer points that make a title truly engaging.
So, Jaffe's "question" to the game industry rings a chord that I think those large companies are def to. That is to say, like a dog whistle, the only being that responds to it is the very being that is inclined to hear it in the first place. For the sake of clarifying this example, I'm refering to smaller, independant game companies that are already striving to generate games that have the absolute hiest production values in every aspect of a game. Funny thing is, those tend to be the games that get completely overlooked.
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