Bobtheduck wrote:I want people to get into games as a storytelling medium, and the current trend is moving away from that.
I don't see that happening. Just because the casual market is getting bigger doesn't mean that the other markets are getting smaller. The casual games are usually made by completely different companies than the larger titles, I can't remember the last time Square-Enix made a casual game for example (okay okay Yosumin for the DS but they didn't
make it they just published it).
Even if the casual market continues to grow, companies like Square or Monolith Soft aren't gonna go "Well guys let's stop making the kind of games we normally do!"
So yeah I don't see the trend moving away from those kinds of games. Those kinds of games may be fewer in number comparatively (casual games are easier and faster to produce than 100+ hour RPGs) but they still exist and are probably coming out at about the same rate as they used to, there's just more stuff coming out in between them.
It's going to be harder and harder to get new people into story-centered games, because rather than saying "I don't really play games, but I'll watch you for a couple minutes" they'll say "Oh, I play games. Angry birds and Farmville! THOSE games just aren't my thing." It gives them a whole new reason to ignore what games are actually capable of.
Most people who aren't into games aren't really going to watch someone play a game anyway, at least that's been my experience. My parents and relatives never cared about video games and even when I was playing something very story focused like Final Fantasy X they never stopped and watched me, they would just say something like "Wow video games sure have come a long way since Pong" and then go do something else. They didn't want to watch because they didn't care about games.
I'm just kind of confused by someone who goes "I do not care about video games but I will watch you play this video game." Doesn't make much sense to me, not saying it doesn't happen though. I've just never seen it.
until the Simpsons, people in the US, by and large, just assumed animation was for kids.
I don't know that this was ever true, the Flintstones for example advertised Winston cigarettes in the 60s, I don't think they were really trying to get kids to smoke so it obviously was meant for adults. Likewise, the old Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons (as well as Superman) were used to drum up support for the war effort. Let's also not forget Private Snafu, a little-known Warner Bros. cartoon with the primary purpose of teaching poorly educated enlisted men.
It doesn't seem to be until the late 50s or so that animation became seen as solely for kids, and there's probably a lot of reasons for that. Things like animation being cheaper to produce than live-action shows (especially when using animated shortcuts) and the ability to do heavy slapstick that would be basically impossible in live-action as well.
So what I'm saying is that while cartoons are seen as kids' stuff today, they certainly weren't always seen as such historically. Simpsons did do a lot to bring people back around to thinking otherwise though. Still, I don't think that this situation is directly comparable to games for a few reasons. Such as one, a person may have happened across Simpsons while channel-surfing. A person who isn't into video games is far less likely to happen across a game in the same manner. Two, Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, South Park, all those things that made people go "This cartoon isn't for kids" accomplished it by having objectionable content in it...which also served to make a lot of people angry and upset and call it filth and ban their kids from watching it. Whereas you and I both know that story-oriented video games don't use the same method to get people interested in the story (not usually anyway).
However, instead of allowing animation to expand and branch out into every narrative genre and audience, like it SHOULD be able to, animation in the US simply split in two: Kids shows and innuendo laden comedies.
Explain all the Disney animated feature films then. This statement is absolutely untrue, it just
seems that way. However, Disney has always been producing very compelling and quality animated films for ages. I know I'm not the only one who got a little teary-eyed at Mufasa's death in Lion King for example.
Disney obviously has a huge monetary advantage in this area, granted. They weren't the only ones though, I'm sure you're familiar with Don Bluth's works such as Secret of NIMH for example. I suppose you could say then that it split into
three and that would be kids' shows, innuendo laden comedies, and feature films. That would be accurate but...it doesn't really prove much.
we never saw an American equivalent to "Monster" or something
I don't know that we really needed one? I'd just chalk it up to a difference in culture. For example, there's never been a Japanese equivalent of Mystery Science Theater 3000, is this some sort of failing of anime? No, not really, they just never wanted to do it for whatever reason.
There's also the fact that Monster, like a good amount of anime, was based on a manga, and comics in Japan are vastly different than comics in the US. Since comic books in the US are
mostly synonymous with superhero stuff, and the fact that most animation isn't based on any sort of comic at all, you get a lot different type of shows produced.
I mean Batman: The Animated Series was pretty awesome though.
The games I like will be shoved even further into the realm of sweaty, fat losers living in their mother's basements than they were before.
I think there comes a point where it really doesn't matter, I mean I don't think people are going to go "Oh well this sweaty fat loser living in his mother's basement is nowhere near as bad as
this one." If you're already in that level, you literally can't be viewed any worse. It'd be like me saying "Now I want to date a guy even less!" Well...how do you get less than zero on something like that?