The games we desire

We desire games, we all do. In Star Trek we were once told “the more complex the mind, the more essential the need to play” (Star Trek, season 1, episode 15). I always embraced that. Gaming was my large escape and I have enjoyed it for decades. Yet the foundation of gaming changed after the Playstation 2 came (and all other systems). Gaming became big business, people with business degrees got involved and soon it went from art to business needs. Gaming suffered and it has suffered for quite some years now. Micro transactions is merely part of it. The larger stage was that art was taken out of the equation. This is why games like Elden Ring, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West are such successes. They embraced art and artsy sides to a much larger degree. This is the reason why places like Ubisoft went from great to below mediocre. There are the games that will always have appeal because of secondary reasons. Sport games being a clear first example.

When we look back to the days of Bullfrog, there was almost no game we did not desire, art was the driving force and it drove our needs deliciously and amazingly. Consider Populous, Flood, Populous 2, Magic Carpet (1 + 2), Dungeon Keeper and some (including me) still worship those times, those games. EA went and created some exploitation version of Dungeon Keeper. Yet they could repair the damage, and they are running out of time. They will need those who played the original to give rise to the next generation. They now require credibility. And it is not the weirdest idea. Six games that represents millions in revenue. Some can be re engineered, yet the larger setting will come from re engineering driving evolution of the game. This reminds me of another good Ubisoft game (they had a few). It was Conquest: Frontier Wars, the review gave it (for the most) 78%-88%. I would set it to around 85%, a game that makes the gamer want more. And there was another side, you could set up a battle game with two other Computer players and you had some options. What was important, you could spend hours in a new galaxy again and again, with two other races, each with intelligence settings. Now what if that concept is remade and also remade in games like a remastered Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper and Populous. Three games that were initially less than 1MB and could optionally keep gamers busy for years. That could spark a new wave of gamers and that is what the streaming services need, fresh blood and returning blood. And the need to play will draw them in. You still need decent games, and I just handed them 6 of them. Well, handing is a stretch, EA has the rights as far as I can tell, but consider that Yesterday I handed the option for 50 million gamers and consider that many games never get anything near that amount. I reckon that my solution with the additional games is a step into the direction of the number I predicted. That solution still needs the first phase, but without the second and third phase it will never grow to the degree required or is that desired? And there we have it, a stage we grow and a stage we create by looking backwards. The six games I mention are most likely IP protected, yet The Commodore Amiga had 2198 games, The Atari ST had a little over 1000 games, close to 10,000 games, If we rate from the highest and look at 10% we get to 219+100+1000 we end with 1319 games and that is if we merely look at the highest 10%. Now some will have protection, but not all will and there is the solution for streaming systems. Upgrade what was and get more people feeling the joy of gaming, not the challenge of some flawed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. Even now we get ‘The final Assassin’s Creed Valhalla update has launched a week early’, the fact that it is for some systems 13GB does not lead to questions, the fact that the game was released on November 10th 2020 is a much larger issue. It is over 2 years old and still requiring patches. It is one of the reasons that streaming systems will win over time. But a system that has good games will endure a lot longer and the games from the old systems remain superior to many of the games released today, not all, but a lot of them. It sets the need for more play, and Streaming systems will deliver there.