P.F.Y.T. #4: I'm Leaving And I'm Taking The Kids

-Penny For Your Thoughts- I'm Leaving And I'm Taking The Kids: Indie Developers And Their Sudden Rise

Before I begin today's serious talk, I just want to get this right out of the way. The following installment of "Penny For Your Thoughts" is NOT to be taken as a Doom and Gloom/Future Video Game Crash statement. This is just my stance on what's going on with the gaming industry as a whole and where I stand on this. So please don't think of this as the end times for the video game industry.....I'm looking at you !!!.........Don't worry bro, still love ya ;u;

Now on to today's talk.

Man. There's been alot of buzz going around on Kickstater these days. And Rightfully so too. I mean you got stuff like Yookah-Laylee; a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, and Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night; a spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night. These games are being developed by former members of big named companies like RareWare and Konami. What shocks me to no end is that these games met their stretch goal IN A MATTER OF HOURS the minute the Kickstarter even started! You see that people? That's what I call dedication to the things we love. Let's also not forget Keiji Inafune's spiritual successor to the Megaman Series, Mighty Number No. 9...which I'm stoked for btw~

...but the question is...why?? Why are these people who used to work for major publishers suddenly churning up these games? Why are we suddenly throwing money at them?....the answer is obvious...

BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT WE WANT!!

These talented people are providing us with the kind of games that Triple A publishers and Developers like EA, SEGA, Konami, are convinced that we have no interest and do not want anymore. I remember a quote from Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts that sets that notion in stone. And I quote...

"Gamers today don't want all this. They just want to shoot things!"

This technically doesn't apply that everygame has to be a shooter game, but you can look at this quote and realize that the reason we aren't getting games like another Castlevania, Banjo-Kazooie, and Megaman is because these publishers who we looked up to in the past have this false belief that these games are a thing of the past....and they couldn't be anymore wrong.

These Triple A developers rely way too much on Triple A games like CoD, Assassin's Creed, and all that nonsense because that's where the money is at the end of the day. They've adapted to a "Go Big or Go Home" strategy  that they are unwilling to take any risks because that could end up costing them financially. They put so much hope and faith on their next big titan of a game...and that leads to them receiving a gruesome blow in the end if the game ends up failing. And then you got people like Konami who basically shot themselves in the foot...Saying they want to shift focus on he mobile market......how long do you think till Konami files for bankruptcy?

Its reasons like this why big name game developers, who once worked for these companies, decided to finally just pack their bags and get the fuck out. They are making the games that these big name companies think we hate or have no more interest in. Listen guys, I don't know about you, but if the kickstarted games I previously mentioned end up getting over millions of dollars within the next few hours; does that game look like something we hate? Hmmmm? Yeah, I think you see my point.

With Konami canceling Silent Hills, Metal Gear Solid 5 rumored to be the final Metal Gear Solid game, Castlevania now God of Warvania, Rare being a shell of their former self, Capcom milking the fuck out of Street Fighter, EA being EA, and RARE being shells of their former self; I think its safe to say that most of the big named companies are starting to rot and decay ever so slowly, but within the decay; a new and beautiful garden grows to cover it all up.

So could this spell the end for video gaming as a whole? Of course not! Rather this is more like a fresh new beginning. A Rebirth if you will. A restart for the well loved game developers who knew what we wanted from the start, but their superiors refused to let them give it to us.

In the wise words of Lance Armstrong. "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." These guys fought through the pain and in the end...it went away. They never gave up. They didn't quit. And look where it got them.

So to my soldiers out there, I ask you....A Penny for your thoughts?