It's obvious, the PC and console game industry is in desperate need of an overhaul. With skyrocketing costs to develop games, gamers aren't going to accept $80-$100 game titles, especially not with mobile prices in the 99 cent - $4.99 range and with food and gas prices on the rise. In addition, attempts to seize the used game market and turn it into a profit source are liable to backfire and won't generate enough revenue to solve the problem in any case. Not to mention, how games are designed these days, needs some rethinking.
As part of our continuing positive approach to the problem (our therapist says it's a necessity), we've put together a list of some of the industry's most annoying game play clichés, from scripted sequences to impossibly incompetent NPCs -- and how they might be solved. Hopefully *will* be solved, because some of these techniques are older than dirt.
Four Gaming Clichés That Absolutely Need To Die
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
