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Top 10 Blunders in Gaming

10. Add – On Hardware -

Sometimes successful, mostly huge failures. Add ons for hardware have been around since the NES days with the gun zapper and Duck Hunt. Over the years, there have been countless new devices from power gloves, VR helmets, specialized controllers, steering wheels, joysticks, all designed to make the gaming experience more enjoyable and immersive. Most of these devices end up worthless after one game. Are is anyone really clammering for Eye of Judgement 2?

9. PS3 Arrogance –

Sony apparently thought the PS2 love was so high that fans would have no beef about dropping $600 bones for a gaming console. PS3 soon gathered dust on shelves.

8. Hormone Based Gaming

With the advance of 3D graphics, some dolts in a board room looked at the demographics and figured that guys would go gaga over video games featuring hot babes and not much else. The commercial for Dead or Alive Volleyball is still remembered as an embarrassment to the industry. And everyone just wants to forget The Guy Game ever existed.

7. No Save Anywhere

Are we still having this debate? Developers continue to think a game is more fun and challenging if they do not allow a save anywhere feature. Nothing sucks more than spending an hour progressing only to die a cheap death, and have to restart over. Far Cry 2 turned off many gamers to its elusive save structure. And Tales of Vesperia like many JRPGS will force you to go through lengthy dialogue screens if you die in the following battles. ARGH!!!!

6. Only Release on DLC

DLC was fine when it was restricted to demos and cheapo arcade titles. However, when full blown gaming titles started releasing exclusively on DLC, developers really froze themselves out of a full pontenial market. For one thing, not everyone has access to high speed internet especially people in rural areas. They have no way to enjoy GTA’s Lost and the Damned yet if the title released in store, there would be more sales. Plus some ppl don’t like fooling with entering in those card code numbers.

5. PC’s Piracy Fight

Back in the day, installing a PC game took nerves of steel, and lots of patience with decoder wheels, password decrypters and other clever ways to foil pirates. Piracy remains a problem for PC games, and the fight goes on. Unfortunately, the fight only manages to irritate legitimate customers, and not the pirates. Massive game file sizes and the need for multiplayer is a good deterrent as any.

4. Video Game as Sports!

Cyberatheletes? Does anyone take this serious? The push to establish video game as a competitive sport is one big joke. No one wants to root for some punk kid who is making tons of money by playing video games. Everyone depises the guy instead. And who enjoys watching people playing video games on a tv on your tv?

3. Video Game TV

Game Informer talks about this in their new issue. It’s a sad failure, yes video game tv is one big dud. It started 10 years ago with Tech TV, an excellent channel devoted to technology, computers and gaming. Then G4 came along and destroyed tech tv. Only Xplay survived . G4 was actually a great cable channel in the day. I enjoyed shows like Filter and Icons. Yet, due to lack of ratings, the show has been watered down to lousy Star Trek reruns. There just is no audience of video game related tv shows probably because the content is all online.

2. MMO madness

Everquest made it look easy. Design a MMO, rake in the money, release a few patches, rake in more money, a game that keeps on paying. So began the me too generation, and MMO after MMO bombed horribly. Even huge licenses like Star Wars could not duplicate the success of Everquest and later, World of Warcraft.

1. Over Hyping Duke Nukem Style

It has become a lame joke and general problem with the industry. Duke Nukem Forever was promised to us over 10 years ago. Is it even a real game in development? No one seems to know. The problem is when developers release info on their games years before the release. It creates huge hype and expectations, and the end result is that the game often disappoints when it finally comes out. Killzone 2 is a solid game, but the reaction feels deflated compared to the hype. Fable suffered greatly from this, while being a solid RPG, it failed to deliver the experience people had in their minds.

We would be better off not knowing about games until they are near completion.