Don't be a Vidiot

Don't be a Vidiot

Sup, mortals.

Just when you thought I was finished with my woeful raving, I'm back with the notes about the last piece of reading I conducted.

This week, I read "Don't be a Vidiot," written by Greg Costikyan.

This was an interesting little read about how video games have hit a rut of "more first-person- shooters!" and "more real-time-strategies!" when there's a whole universe of game types out there to explore. For this blog post, I will as ever simply give the question posed to me before the reading and answer it to the best of my ability and willpower.

*ahem* "Costikyan says a Vidiot is 'a person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games.' From the notes you have taken from the article what do you understand the problems to be and do you agree?"

Well, as Costikyan explained, the problem with Vidiots is that they have very little knowledge of new types of games other than what they are comfortable and familiar with. This, coupled with the popularity of video games over more traditional games, as well as the massive population of so-called Vidiots within the video-gaming "community" has lead to a lapse in innovation of creativity within games design, and a lack of major game releases that don't follow specified parameters or genres.

More simply put, a chosen few genres of video games (most often first-person-shooters) are iterated and reiterated time and again, making them the most popular genre and restricting what else is made.

This means that many peoples' experience of gaming is limited to just a few genres or platforms, which leads back into the same things being made and new ideas which could have massive potential being discarded as likely failures. This is due to both designers having a limited knowledge of what works and what doesn't, due to themselves being Vidiots, and to publishers being disinclined to invest in something that isn't firmly grounded with a popular precedent.

Ultimately, this means that, while there is a massive variety of possible games, the only thing being made is Call of Duty. And that's awfully sad.

So, that's my understanding of the problem. Do I agree with it? Well, it's a sound theory, it makes perfect sense, and the outcome is there for everyone to see. I'd say that I agree with this.

There's a massive amount of possibility with video games, as well as gaming in general. Where is that variance? In the discard-bin of publishers who don't want to risk their wallets on anything different (not even new, just different from the current winners of the popularity contest).

But, hey, at least we have nine Call of Duty games which haven't actually changed much in mechanics or graphics since the fourth one, six years ago.

Well, that's me done; it's getting late, and I still have other things to be doing.

Praise the Emperor with your very lives, mortals.