Living in the Fringe

I’ve always thought of myself as a mainstream gamer. I don’t mean that I’m the demographic picture of your typical gamer — 42 years-old, with a mortgage, 2 kids, a heart condition and a job in marketing might not be, exactly, prototypical — I mean that when it comes to my gaming predilections, I trend toward the stock-standard AAA titles.

I’m not entirely sure when that stopped being true, but now taking stock of the situation I have to admit that it probably hasn’t been true for a while.

On a whim I reviewed my Steam purchase history for 2014 to see what all has come into my greedy, gaming hands. Having done so, I have three thoughts. Allow me to convey them to you in the traditional language of middle-aged-corporate-lackeys across the world: bulletpoints.

* Oh, that’s where all my money went.
* I remember playing, like, half of these games.
* Where are the big releases for 2014?

Be glad I didn’t make a PowerPoint deck. I was sorely tempted.

If I go back to ten short years ago and look at the most popular games of that year, it’s basically a who’s-who of games Sean played that year. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — played it. Half-Life 2 — duh. Halo 2 — start to finish, baby. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater — didn’t love it, but hell yeah it was in the mix. World Of Warcraft — seriously, do I even need to say anything? Knights of the Old Republic II, Far Cry, Burnout 3, NFL2K5, Fable, Chronicles of Riddick, and on and on.

Setting aside the fact that it’s only just occurring to me that 2004 can make a damn fine argument as being a great year in gaming, at 32 years-old I was still deeply in the thick of the gaming zeitgeist. Now, even the few higher-profile games I managed to buy barely made a dent into my gaming time for the year.

Aside from a variety of DLC, Rocksmith song packs and anything EUIV related, my purchases across the year are made up of games like Might & Magic X, Age of Wonders III, Wasteland 2, Endless Legend, Wargame: Red Dragon, Divinity: Original Sin, Defense Grid 2 and Goat Simulator.

Sure, I did put in a good 5 or 6 hours into Titanfall, gave a smattering of attention to Wolfenstein, was largely uninspired by Shadow Of Mordor and have been intermittently wandering through Dragon Age: Inquisition, but aside from a couple of solid Blizzard expansions, the bigger the marketing budget of the game, the less likely I was to spend time with it.

When I think about the games I didn’t even play, though, I’m frankly surprised. The major-release games I didn’t play in 2014 is every bit as long as the list of major releases I did play in 2004: Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, Alien: Isolation, Destiny, Infamous: Second Son, Dark Souls II, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Mario Kart 8, Madden 15 and Far Cry 4. All of them, ignored entirely.

Maybe it was just a down year, or maybe I was just so infatuated by a few specific games that I didn’t feel the normal gaming wanderlust I have in years past, but that’s the thing: I’d hazard to guess that I spent more hours playing games this past year than I had in any other recent year. I had an absolute blast with my gaming time, and leave 2014 with countless fond memories of my playtime. I am as happy a gamer as there is.

It’s just that it’s all coming from less familiar and less established corners of the industry.

I don’t think there’s any real statement to be made about what my personal change means for the gaming industry. It could be tempting to say something about the strength and quality of gaming coming from less historically visible corners of the business, but I don’t get the impression that the major releases for 2014 were struggling to find buyers. No, I’ll avoid the temptation to draw some kind of conclusion about the health of AAA gaming just because I didn’t buy their games this year.

Somehow the headline "42-Year-Old Man Stops Playing Call of Duty, Gaming Industry Health in Question" doesn’t quite ring true.

I am a little melancholy about this shift, though. I always liked the feeling of being at the center of the giant cultural Katamari ball. Sure there’s a lot more freedom and innovation at the fringes, but I always enjoyed the big spectacle of high-profile, heavily hyped games.

Those things are still out there, of course. Knowing that the biggest chunk of gaming’s billions of dollars were aimed squarely at delivering experiences I liked isn’t a bad thing, but now they’re all the equivalent of Judd Apatow movies: a shadowy, shallow reminder of a thing I once adored. Sorry, Judd.

I don’t have any real reason to think 2015 will be much different. As I look through the list of major releases coming in 2015, I see a few things that are kind of intriguing, but nothing that really gets my blood boiling.

Again, I don’t doubt there will be amazing games released this year, and that I’ll lose dozens if not hundreds of hours in new releases. I just suspect that, increasingly, they won’t be the same ones that get the big headlines and high-profile reviews.

Comments

In the exact same boat, philosophically. The AAA blockbusters, where I was pretty comfortably served for years, has appealed to me less and less since its promising creative apogee around 2008. Since the Xbone and PS4 naturally relied on those games to sell themselves, I didn't find enough, or really any, good reasons to spend $400+ on a new console. For what?

Instead, I got a new computer, and caught up on ETS2, Octodad, Gone Home, Viscera Cleanup Detail, Jazzpunk, Papers, Please.

And Counter-Strike. Well, plus ça change...

Admit it, Elysium, it all changed for you in the Fall of 2013: On a wet and watery ramp in BF4, an old nemesis from your Joint Operations days shattered your AAA-gaming paradigm as he rode to greet you on a quad runner....

I still remember that GWJ game night with fondness..but not as much fondness as almost any of our Joint Operations sessions.

Gravey wrote:

The AAA blockbusters, where I was pretty comfortably served for years, has appealed to me less and less since its promising creative apogee around 2008.

Regardless of the specific year, I feel the same. And it's thanks to digital distribution (mainly Steam), specifically the significantly lower barrier of entry for independent game developers to publish their games.

For me, I just got tired of the similar tone and style of many (maybe even most) AAA games. If I look at Elysium's list of games he missed this year:

Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, Alien: Isolation, Destiny, Infamous: Second Son, Dark Souls II, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Mario Kart 8, Madden 15 and Far Cry 4

Only Mario Kart 8 and Madden 15 stand out as being different from the rest. I realize that there are important distinctions between those other games in terms of gameplay, but there's a strong similarity in tone, presentation, and anticipated audience between all of them. It's like looking at a rack of superhero comics: there's a lot of difference between the characters themselves, sure, but they're all superhero stories.

I just got tired of superheroes. They're not bad, and I don't think people are wrong for liking them (or their low budget alt. comic counterparts like Divinity), but they don't really catch my eye like they used to.

But like doubtingthomas said in the game of the year thread, one of the best things about gaming is that you don't have to play something popular to play something great. There's so much available that you can play nothing but small budget indie affairs (or weird Japanese RPGs, or first-party Nintendo games) and never touch the games that are getting advertised on the sides of Mountain Dew cases and still have a rich and fun year.

Hey! Elysium achieved Hipster Gaming Status!

Welcome to the club, game king. You may want to deny you're one of us, but sooner or later you'll hear yourself answer the question "what are you playing" by saying "oh, some little indie game. You probably haven't heard of it."

That's when you know you've crossed over, like I did years and years ago. The games are great, but get used to people rolling their eyes when they think you can't see them.

Just gonna say, I understand (from the support group) that there's manageable fun to be had on Nintendo's system.

I've done much of my gaming on the WiiU as the system allows 30 year old me to game in bite size chunks. I've recently gotten more serious about using Steam and have discovered some of the amazing titles I missed while college me was playing nothing but WoW. I expect to complete my current Steam pile in 2028.

Changing my gaming habits was all about available time and where I needed to be. It's hard to raise children down in the basement playing Destiny and Titanfall for 100 hours. I really want to play those, but I just don't have the time.

Give me a 4-6 hour game I can spread out over three nap times. And Skyrim. Oh yea.

I find as I'm getting older that I'm becoming more and more an "oldschool"-type gamer. I haven't touched a Call of Duty since 4 (and haven't enjoyed one since 2), and I find myself getting excited mostly over games that are heavy on difficulty and story. One of the few games I actually found myself getting excited over before release this year was Legend of Grimrock 2. I probably had the most fun this year with Wasteland 2 on hard, despite its flaws. I've really gone through a maturation period, analogous perhaps to the industry's itself, where big releases became less and less important as I found myself having less time for them. I now feel almost as if I've come full circle to where I was back in my childhood NES days: where having one game that I really savored was the most important thing. Most of the games in my Steam library these days tend to have 1 or 2 hours in them, or 120 hours in them.

I also love short, experimental titles, but that's just a weakness for interesting possibilities.

I'm definitely in the same boat. Of course, I feel like I'm just less interested in the hobby as a whole nowadays, but a lot of that stems from a disinterest in most AAA gaming as well. People like to always say that since they are older, responsibilities are what lead to playing games less, but I have a feeling more of it comes down to the desire to make the time to begin with.

This feeling came to a front earlier this year. My girlfriend travels a lot so there was a month-long period where I was mostly on my own, and work was also slow. I built it up as a great time to "catch up", but was surprised to find that my gaming habits did not change that much. There would be the occasional title that would grab me, but there was a growing number of the "hotly anticipated" titles where I would play a couple hours, feel that I "got" what it was going for, and interest would wane rapidly. Then I would move on to spending my time on something else.

Of course, what I'm questioning is how much of that is me and how much of that is the industry? Games sure are becoming more of a "go big and go home" event, as you can tell by the homogenization of how a lot of them play, and you get the feeling that fewer risks are being made in order to handle the growing development costs. But I also wonder if I'm exaggerating this effect, and how much of it is just that the AAA industry has always catered to the young male tastes, and I'm no longer officially in that demographic anymore. Maybe if it was still the 25 year old kuddles in 2014, I would have found Watch Dogs and Titanfall more exciting? Hard to tell.

Those games you played this year are also the games a lot of people seem to rate higher than the AAA titles you didn't play.
Wasteland 2, Divinity, Endless Legend, even EUIV hardly seems fringe within a PC-gaming sphere. Clearly your gaming is PC-heavy overall (which might be fringe in a way), but those titles sounds like some of the most influential PC games in 2014.
Maybe gaming are just more divided into subcultures than they were 10 years ago. Now you are playing what happens to be the ""AAA"-equivalent games within the PC subculture.
Is there really a giant cultural Katamari ball one could be part of in 2014? Not sure there was one unified culture 10 years ago either.

As for myself having only recently hit the terrifying sharp corner of 30, my gaming was mostly PC-focused, with Divinity, Wasteland, 'whatever Blizzard is doing' etc. as some of the main games. 10 years ago I was even more PC-focused however, so other than HL2, WoW and KOTOR2 I played nothing on your 2004 list. Call of Duty seems as interesting today as it did 10 years ago. Which is not very interesting at all.

Not dodging the question of AAA quality, it does seem like a lot of the AAA titles this year in particular was received badly, even by their supposed target groups: Watch Dogs, AC: Unity, Destiny all got some harsh words on the way when I listened to GiantBombs game of the year podcasts.

Wait till your my age, 54 .

My favorite game this year: Ultimate General Gettysburg.

I'm on the outer banks of the fringe!

Ultimate General Gettysburg was a fantastic game!

Elysium wrote:

Ultimate General Gettysburg was a fantastic game!

You're a 54 year old man, trapped in a 42 year old's body

I had the option of buying a current gen system this festive season. I opted for a WiiU. I'm still not sure if younger me is talking to me yet, but current me is happy enough.

I think the situation is just so different from what it was in 2004. If you weren't getting one of those AAA games, what were you getting? Edutainment? GameBoy Advance games? There wasn't much in the way of an indie market, and the AAA space could still afford a variety of budgets that it struggles with supporting today. The question to ask is, were there grand strategy games or RPG's like what you've been playing this year? Or were they mostly absent?

The gaming landscape has changed, and to me it's rather silly to expect your habits and tastes to remain "consistent" outside of the gameplay itself. This doesn't mean the AAA space is lacking, but it certainly means that, right now, there are games elsewhere that appeal to your tastes and desires more.

There's also the question of just how much have shooters changed in the time between Wolfenstein: The New Order and Half-Life 2. In some cases, it's just a matter of "been there, done that".

ccesarano wrote:

I think the situation is just so different from what it was in 2004. If you weren't getting one of those AAA games, what were you getting? Edutainment? GameBoy Advance games? There wasn't much in the way of an indie market, and the AAA space could still afford a variety of budgets that it struggles with supporting today. The question to ask is, were there grand strategy games or RPG's like what you've been playing this year? Or were they mostly absent?

That's what I hate about these AAA games, man. I get older, they stay the same age.

But yeah, in 2004 there was AAA games—i.e. all video games—and that browser game where you drop the physics guy down the bubbles. Now all the types of games that used to fall under the umbrella of "AAA" can be found in mid-tier games, high quality independent games, any and everywhere. Meanwhile AAA itself has become more narrow, calcified, and formulaic.

So in 2004 AAA games sold me an Xbox (Burnout 3, Jade Empire), but while I relied on them (as you say, what else was there?) I can't now. I do feel that the AAA space is lacking, in creativity, in diversity, but what it's missing has migrated and thrives now in all these new spaces of game creation. So I do kind of share Elysium's melancholy in that way: I'm spoiled for choice now in all spheres of video gamedom; but hey, AAA—why didn't you grow up too?

Not me. I'm still a AAA fanboy. Indie games just don't do it for me. Especially retro indie games. Yuck. I played retro games the first time around. I've had enough of them. I want HBAO+ and 4GB of textures and soft shadows and a bajillion polygons and TressFX and weeds. Lots of weeds.

ccesarano wrote:

I think the situation is just so different from what it was in 2004. If you weren't getting one of those AAA games, what were you getting? Edutainment? GameBoy Advance games? There wasn't much in the way of an indie market, and the AAA space could still afford a variety of budgets that it struggles with supporting today. The question to ask is, were there grand strategy games or RPG's like what you've been playing this year? Or were they mostly absent?

It's not as different as you think: even though the market was smaller as a whole, there were still all sorts of interesting games hanging around on the fringes back then. Katamari Damacy, Metal Wolf Chaos, Crusader Kings, and Children of the Nile came out in 2004, for example, and there are tons of inventive and bizarre games if you look at the surrounding years as well.

Of course, the huge difference is in how you would go about buying these games. Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 too and it was saddled with a controversial requirement for online activation through a new service called Steam. Those fringe PC titles were at the whims of retailers that were already starting to downsize in response to a PC market that was perceived to be rife with piracy; in 2014, these games can thrive through multiple platforms for digital distribution.

Meanwhile, sixth generation consoles were able to host a raft of middle-tier retail releases in 2004 and most of those games would be (severely) downscaled into XBLA/PSN/eShop games or overstuffed into perilous, fully-priced retail gambles in 2014 (if they were going to be made at all).

The games were always there. The ways that you went about buying them, though...

Metal Wolf Chaos just celebrated its tenth anniversary a couple weeks ago. Still waiting for the rest-of-the-world release. I played the hell out of that OXM disc, speaking of how you went about accessing esoteric things back then.

Gravey wrote:

Metal Wolf Chaos just celebrated its tenth anniversary a couple weeks ago. Still waiting for the rest-of-the-world release.

I'm hoping that the Souls games have given From Software enough clout to make a re-release more of a "when" than an "if."

Then again, we never got a proper English release of Policenauts, even after Kojima became Konami's ace.

2004 was nearing the end of an era where it didn't seem bizarre for fans to have to seek out interesting fringe games through the import scene, a scene which is FAR less relevant in 2014 now that virtually everything at least makes it to one English speaking region. Valkyria Chronicles 3 is the last big import treasure that I can think of off the top of my head and, with VC's release on PC, even that game has a ray of hope.

BadKen wrote:

...4GB of textures and soft shadows and a bajillion polygons and TressFX and weeds. Lots of weeds.

Bah humbug! Those things aren't game stuff, they're SIGGRAPH topics.

The Paradox Paradox

AAA just isn't as tasty after dipping into that well.

In 2004, I was up to my eyeballs in patients. The only game I had time for was rounds of Gran Turismo and Tekken between cases. Having said that, the games me and my buds were apt to follow have always been turn-based strategy and tactical shooters. The AAA of both Western and Japanese sensibilities were apt to lure one or another of us away, but we never really favored them as a group.

TLDR: I was fringe before it was cool. /hipster

OzymandiasAV wrote:

It's not as different as you think: even though the market was smaller as a whole, there were still all sorts of interesting games hanging around on the fringes back then. Katamari Damacy, Metal Wolf Chaos, Crusader Kings, and Children of the Nile came out in 2004, for example, and there are tons of inventive and bizarre games if you look at the surrounding years as well.

Still doesn't cover the huge span of game types you see. You'd never play something like Transistor, Child of Light, or Valiant Hearts on the GBA unless it was made by Nintendo themselves, or another Japanese company like Capcom.

I'm inclined to say Katamari Damacy got lucky based purely on its goofy nature, but I'm not really sure on the success of the other games as I was never really part of the PC gaming master race at the time. Unreal Tournament 2K4 was essentially my last PC game for years.

I think we're also a bit too caught up in 2004, specifically, which as Sean noted was a banner year for AAA releases, with another occurring in 2007. But I don't think it's a problem that you don't always see such notable years, either. Plus, due to budgets, AAA studios are also putting out fewer games. Warner Bros. Interactive is putting out Batman, Mortal Kombat, Injustice and Shadow of Mordor, but they're all decently spread out. None of them are bad games, though. You're just not playing all of them in a single year, as you might have in 2004.

I actually lost track of what I was even arguing at this point, truth told. I suppose to me the AAA industry used to allow for a greater variety of budgets, but they've always been hit-based. They could just afford more failures. Now, the bigger publishers may be unwilling to risk a failure, but you have a lot of platforms capable of handling middle to low tier budgets. That is, after all, one of the reasons I've been so in love with my 3DS. It has the experimental sort of titles that I love whose smaller budgets force a tighter focus on execution.

The major-release games I didn’t play in 2014 is every bit as long as the list of major releases I did play in 2004: Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, Alien: Isolation, Destiny, Infamous: Second Son, Dark Souls II, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Mario Kart 8, Madden 15 and Far Cry 4. All of them, ignored entirely.

New, Sequel, New, New, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel

I think you can look at the blockbusters for 2014 and if you didn't like or are tired of the other games in the series, why would you get the newest iteration. I think they were ignored because of fatigue in that series or genre and you just sought out different experiences/genres that are new or you haven't played in a while. Makes sense and doesn't mean you don't like Triple AAA games, just means the same type of Triple AAA games have been made for the last 5-6 years and you are ready for something different.

BadKen wrote:

Not me. I'm still a AAA fanboy. Indie games just don't do it for me. Especially retro indie games. Yuck. I played retro games the first time around. I've had enough of them. I want HBAO+ and 4GB of textures and soft shadows and a bajillion polygons and TressFX and weeds. Lots of weeds.

Yup, same here.

LeapingGnome wrote:
The major-release games I didn’t play in 2014 is every bit as long as the list of major releases I did play in 2004: Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, Alien: Isolation, Destiny, Infamous: Second Son, Dark Souls II, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Mario Kart 8, Madden 15 and Far Cry 4. All of them, ignored entirely.

New, Sequel, New, New, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel

And yet:

Might & Magic X, Age of Wonders III, Wasteland 2, Endless Legend, Wargame: Red Dragon, Divinity: Original Sin, Defense Grid 2 and Goat Simulator

Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, New, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, New.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Valkyria Chronicles 3 is the last big import treasure that I can think of off the top of my head and, with VC's release on PC, even that game has a ray of hope.

I can think of a few others, with the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VII probably being the single most-requested game I can think of in the Japanese/import gaming community. There are plenty of others.

Keep in mind that what also changed between 2004 and 2014 in terms of imports is that it's now a lot easier to get first-hand impressions of imports, as well as watching Let's Play videos and the like. This keeps games from maybe getting fetishized by importers more than they necessarily deserved. So where a game like Beyond the Labyrinth might have become a bit of a holy grail for importers in 2004, in 2014 you can watch video and see that it's actually kinda boring to play.

My biggest issue with AAA games is that I've never been a fan of shooters. I don't hate them (there are even some that I enjoy quite a bit) but by and large they don't do it for me, so my AAA pool of possible games to enjoy is slashed (at least historically, for the period of time shooters were the reigning genre.)

I've always been a bit perplexed by anyone who willfully ignores "indie" anything. Indie is way too broad of a term to be entirely ignored. There's so much that is "independent" and like mainstream stuff, a majority of it is probably subpar - but there are also COUNTLESS gems in there and there's also more "there" there to look through for those gems.

The above applies to music and film as well.

ccesarano wrote:

Still doesn't cover the huge span of game types you see. You'd never play something like Transistor, Child of Light, or Valiant Hearts on the GBA unless it was made by Nintendo themselves, or another Japanese company like Capcom.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars was released on the GBA in 2002.

Also, Child of Light and Valiant Hearts are both developed and published by Ubisoft, who's kinda... big. Kinda like how Capcom was back then.

cube wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

Still doesn't cover the huge span of game types you see. You'd never play something like Transistor, Child of Light, or Valiant Hearts on the GBA unless it was made by Nintendo themselves, or another Japanese company like Capcom.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars was released on the GBA in 2002.

Also, Child of Light and Valiant Hearts are both developed and published by Ubisoft, who's kinda... big. Kinda like how Capcom was back then.

Well Ubisoft is kind of big, certainly, but are they suddenly pushing these smaller games because they can, or because the indie-boom revealed that smaller games can be profitable? Aside from a game like Broken Sword, how many Western developed titles were on the GBA that had a proper amount of care put into them like Metroid: Zero Mission or Mega Man Zero/Battle Network?

LarryC wrote:

TLDR: I was fringe before it was cool. /hipster

Ha!

We should start a steam group. Maybe call it "gamers with beards."

ccesarano wrote:

Well Ubisoft is kind of big, certainly, but are they suddenly pushing these smaller games because they can, or because the indie-boom revealed that smaller games can be profitable?

Does it matter? Most of the smaller Japanese series came about because they found that they could make them, and that there was a niche.

ccesarano wrote:

Aside from a game like Broken Sword, how many Western developed titles were on the GBA that had a proper amount of care put into them like Metroid: Zero Mission or Mega Man Zero/Battle Network?

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