For the seventh straight year, the NBA will have a different champion. A level of parity not thought possible in the era of the dynasty. I’m a huge sports fan. That’s obvious, right? While most of my bandwidth goes toward football and my beloved Philadelphia Eagles, my first love was basketball. And I still love it. And as I’ve been keeping up with the Oklahoma City Thunder/Minnesota Timberwolves series, as well as the New York Knicks/Indiana Pacers series, I thought to myself, “The gaming industry could really use some of that parity itself.”
With the NBA Playoffs reaching its Conference Finals, there are only four teams left. But there’s something different. All of the remaining teams either have never won a championship, or they haven’t won in around 50 years. And that’s down to some rules changing how teams are built. Personally, it’s not my favorite setup. But there is something to it. Just not for the NBA.
THE NBA DIDN’T REALLY GET IT RIGHT, BUT FOR GAMING, IT WORKS
Before I get too deep into this, this is not a one-to-one comparison. Given the NBA’s unwieldy financial structure, parity in the way they operate isn’t what I’m speaking of. The NBA wants to cover up organizational incompetence with a strict set of financial guidelines. They’re punishing organizations for having the audacity to be run well and helping out those that tend to make idiotic decisions (hi, Mavericks). What I’m talking about is parity in the general sense.
We’ve gotten to the point where the gaming industry is so top-heavy. The AAAs take up too much space. And they take too much to make. More than should be necessary, to be honest. So, we get into these situations where the idea with every game is “make as much money back as possible.” That’s an obvious problem. Especially when games like Clair Obscur exist. The back-and-forth about that game doesn’t matter — it’s a stupid argument. A developer had an idea, got a team together, found a way to secure funding, and made it happen. It was a game born of a love for gaming and storytelling.
Operating from a place of genuine passion has never been the wrong way to go in gaming. And a lot of that is being sucked out of the AAA side of things. As companies look to appease shareholders and turn the biggest profit possible, they’re ironically stifling the very thing that would make them the money in the first place. But, hey, the dorks with calculators know everything, right?
THE INDIES HAVe BEEN SHOWING YOU HOW THIS SHOULD WORK FOR A WHILE NOW
You know what I never hear? I never hear indie devs saying that another indie game is going to overshadow them. There’s space for them all to exist. Yes, sometimes we get a little crazy when a Steam sale hits and the games sit in the backlog until we can get to them. But the games are getting bought, they’re getting played. Because they aren’t so demanding of our time. A good indie game can run you anywhere from 2 to 12 hours. In and out and on to the next.
AAA games have fallen into this hole of needing to have “more” at all times. It’s not enough to create an industry that can sustain itself, they have to squeeze every dollar out of it. We don’t need to force DLC into everything. When a game is over, it’s okay for it to be over. They funnel impossible amounts of money into these games, then require that money be made back multiple times over. If they don’t hit these numbers, then the dorks decide that good, talented people must lose their jobs.
It’s a level of industry-wide malpractice that needs to be checked and eradicated. Where the NBA (in my opinion) is better when you have dynasties and teams to chase, the gaming industry isn’t like that. We don’t need a couple games a year taking all the bandwidth. We need an equal spread of various game types. Journalism that isn’t driven by clicks, forcing writers to chase trends for the outlet to make money. I can assure you that no one wants to write an article about “The 5 best characters in fighting game history.”
this can still be salvaged
There’s still an opportunity to make this industry as healthy and sustainable as we all know it can be. Support indie games. Give these devs the same shots you give the big names. There are so many creative and talented people making games on their own or in small teams who deserve visibility. Support independent games journalism. There are some real awesome people out here still talking and writing about games, and doing so at an elite level.
Don’t depend on the big companies or outlets to be the ones to hold this thing together. They can’t — and they won’t. The gaming industry is better off when those who actually care about it have a say in how it grows and operates. It always has been, and it always will be.
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