Gaming: Future trends?

It's sad that few games made today with their flashy graphics and realistic rendering hold the same entertainment value that you can garner from some colored pixels jumping in a 2D world.

Let me talk about today's world of gaming. Gaming has plunged from a somewhat underground and almost scorned culture to becoming the same vanilla, overdosed garbage that almost every phenomenon that hits pop culture has experienced.

The game world is no longer rocked by the nerd. Rather, a majority of players are now the casual, teen to early adult guy. The kind of guy who used to make fun of someone if they played too much Nintendo. The kind of guy who will buy it if it's realistically violent, lest they sacrifice their masculinity by playing anything more "kiddy". The consumer market is being bloated by mediocre developers who pump clone after crappy clone of the same generic sports game or button mashing crime game.

The sad part about it? These such games are the top sellers.

Yes, simply put, the buisness is not about the work anymore. Years ago, a developer had to put work into a game. It had to be creative, fun, different and innovative. Sequels were good (Donkey Kong Country). Developers couldn't simply pop a name on a box and expect it to ship a million copies when the game itself barely deserves a rent.

I don't know about the rest of the gaming community, but frankly, I'm bored with what they're putting out now. Every best-selling game seems to be some dark, overly explicit gorefest, or rather, a half-assed sequel to one.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my violent video games. I like pumping people full of lead in a Bond game or beating the pulp out of someone in a game like True Crimes. But when the market is overwhelmed with the senseless, unadultered violence packaged in a cookie cutter way, I can't help but wish there were something different, or more creative out there.

But some developers have been trying to produce a solid, creative game. The problem? These games don't seem to stay around long. The majority market won't buy it. Now that gaming is a serious billion dollar industry catering to an older market, like movies, it is losing it's artistry.

Watch and old black and white movie. Watch some Hitchcock. In many of his movies, there didn't need to be mind numbing, gratuitous violence, flashy graphics or a paparrazzi of advertisement and hype for it to be good. No, his work, his writing, his shooting, the skillful actors, that is what made his movies great and more powerful than any mainstream modern picture today.

Instead, like the game industry, the movie industry is bogged down by the lowest common denominator, the brainless, mass population with the most money. Good movies are usually made by indie filmmakers, who sadly, rarely get their works recognized and don't see near the amount of money the cro-magnon like works of People Magazine Hollywood do.

Is gaming doomed in the next years to plunge into mindless garbage and mediocrity? Obviously there are still wonderful games being produced today. But the current trend is disturbing, and I wonder, in the future, will we have the same old gaming we love or a industry like the movie industry?