ARTICLE: 'Gaming Is Now For The Elite'

Perhaps because of the recent election results, I've been extremely bitter towards the 1% of society who inexplicably own the entire world. This includes the arts sector, and just when I thought gaming was becoming socially accepted despite already being the highest earning entertainment industry, the average age of politicians has soared - meaning we can expect another five years of besuited gentlemen thinking that you steer a controller like a wheel and Zelda is the name of the hero.

Anyone can pick up a book and read it. Anyone can walk to the theatre and watch a play. Anyone can walk to the cinema and watch a film. DVD players and DVD's are ridiculously cheap these days, so you just need to log onto eBay or go to your nearest second hand store and you can watch films. Also, if you have a DVD player then you can also play CD's. Failing that, if you have a phone then you can probably play music on that. If nothing else, you probably have a device that can tune into the radio somewhere. Or I guess you could just use a computer...

Gaming used to work in the same way. You buy a console. You buy a game. You put the game in the console. You play the game.

Remember when it was all so simple...

Now, however, you buy a console. You buy a game. You connect the console to the internet. You wait three days for the software to update. You create an account. You put the game in the console. You wait a week for the game to update. You create another account. Your internet craps out. The server craps out. You do anything other than play the game. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a conspiracy to get children to read more.

And this is all the fault of gaming publishers and console manufacturers. They hold a monopoly over the entire market - and there's nothing anyone can do about it because you need consoles or Steam or Uplay or Origin to play games. Without consoles or game clients, you can't play games.

Universal Studios are a really big Hollywood studio, but - as much as they would like to - they don't own Hollywood. They don't own cinemas (well, not anymore). They don't own your DVD player. Without them, the film industry would still truck along. You could still enjoy good movies, and whilst you might lose a chunk of your library, you will still be able to watch films.

Meanwhile, if Valve were erased from existence, they would take with it almost every noteworthy video game there is with it. It's really terrifying how Valve have gone from 'the guys who made Half Life' to 'the guys who own PC gaming' within the space of ten years. It's gotten to the point where buying a PC game from Amazon now just gives you a Steam unlock code - they don't even bother with the disc anymore.

And because the war has already been won, companies feel the liberty to treat their consumers with utter contempt. They can force you to constantly remain online - kicking you out of the game if you lose connection - for no reason other than because you have to put up with it. They can ship the game in a near-broken state and just patch everything later...if they can be bothered. They can give you a disc that has all the DLC they ever intend to release already on it, but you have to pay over £50 on top of what you paid for the game itself just to get all the unlock codes. Why do they do this? Because the only way we can stop them is by not gaming.

Thankfully we have GOG.com, which is slowly becoming a credible rival due to it being so simple. You buy a game and you get a .exe file which you can keep forever. It's a combination of the hassle-free approach gaming used to have and the convinience of digital download. But only a select few new releases are done via GOG, and GOG seems more dedicated to re-releasing classics than trying to rival Valve.

This is probably how millionaires play games...

A handfull of rich corporations have basically bought the entire artform of gaming. The elite own gaming, and they've crafted the art into a way that it can only be enjoyed by the elite.

Console gaming used to be for the proletarians, whilst PC gaming was for the expert. You wanted to run a PC game then you had to build your own computer and learn how to use DOS command prompts. Then there was a fleeting golden age in the late 90's/early 2000's when PCs were cost-efficient and PC games were awesome. This was followed by the release of the PS2, which remains the best console of all time simply because it was so easy to make games for. This meant that there were thousands of awful third-party efforts, but also a library full of quirky titles you'd never see today and solid gold classics.

Then the XBOX one hit. No, not the XBOX One, I mean the first XBOX - the one that came out in 2001.

It was the most powerful console of its generation, capable of running PC-quality graphics. It was also made out of duct-tape and superglue. Making games for the XBOX was awkward and always resulted in cutting corners.

Games became shorter, more linear, and simpler. Why? Because it was more time-consuming (and thus expensive) to make games for the XBOX, and so corners had to be cut. Granted: some of the best games have been created as the result of cutting corners, but these are games that trimmed down on graphics and/or scripted sequences. XBOX games cut corners by focusing all their energies on the visuals and removing gameplay elements.

Games such as Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil bombed not because they didn't sell enough copies, but because they cost a lot of money to make. If both games were just developed for the PS2 and PC then they might have actually turned a profit because it would've been quicker and cheaper to make the game in the first place. This practice of spending millions making games then everyone being dissapointed when they can only make millions back is still going. Unless drastic change is made then the Triple A market is certainly going to crash.

"I had to sell all my lights, but it
was TOTALLY worth it"

It didn't help that games made for the XBOX which were then ported to the PC run like crap today. Doom 3 is at best unstable. Deus Ex: Invisible War is almost unplayable. I had to download a fanmade patch just to get past the tutorial to Thief: Deadly Shadows without crashing. And don't even get me started on Call Of Cthulu: Dark Corners Of The Earth. These are horrid ports of fairly decent games, and the reason why they're horrid ports is because they were made for a horrid console.

To make things even worse, game companies jacked up the specs for the PC ports for...some reason. These games required 500mb of RAM, which sounds like nothing today, but back in the early 2000's this was ridiculous. For comparison, 500mb of RAM was how much the PS3 had. Just like the whole 'always online' thing, it seems companies did this just because they could get away with it.

And they still do it. In a sane world, the XBOX would have been considered a step back for gaming. But it's become the industry standard. Game designers are forced to develop games with such intricate graphics that only the richest can make games for the PS4. OK, so that means no more crappy third-party games - but on the other hand no experimental titles that publishers can take a risk with. If you don't have a team of thousands and enough money to buy everyone in Africa a stash of cocaine then it's PC-exclusive for you.

So the credible option is to buy a PC instead, right? Actually, no. Publishers releasing awful ports is still a thing, as is making the minimum requirements for said ports ludicrous. Arkham Knight's minimum specs are ridiculous, especially considering how awful the port is - to the point that it's still being fixed by developers. PC gaming is the only credible option if you're rich, since if you want to stay ahead on hardware then you'll need to upgrade your PC every year or so. And gaming PC's aren't cheap, plus - because the best option is to build it all yourself - it's very easy to completely screw up. You can blow your power supply, fry your motherboard, corrupt your hard drive, and don't ever attempt liquid cooling. Seriously: whose bright idea was it to have water inside your computer?

And PC game development has been marred by Valve and their domination. You want to sell your game on Steam then you need to give Valve a share of your profits. This used to be worthwhile as it meant that in return for a cut Valve will ensure your game gets popular. But now Valve have completely ruined Steam Greenlight, meaning anyone can publish anything on Steam - which has provoked a wave of crap. I used to watch the 'new releases' tab like a hawk just to see all the interesing ideas come forth. But now it's mostly awful, and anything remotely interesting usually has the backing of someone who used to make Triple A games - which really defeats the point of such services as Kickstarter.

Gaming is made by the rich for the rich. And this isn't a healthy way to develop an artform. I'd argue literature started getting really good when more people were able to read and writers wrote because they wanted to tell a story rather than show off their fancy education. The reason why films caught on was because they were originally cheap funfair attractions that you only needed a few pennies to watch. Gradually shutting an artform away from the masses isn't development. In fact, it's the opposite of development. I can't bloody wait for the revolution to start...

I don't know why it saddens me so much that this is the default controller setup.