10 More Things Today's Gamers Wouldn’t Understand

10. There's A Fine Line Between "Innovation" And "Gimmick"

An innovation is a groundbreaking concept that usually has never been seen before. A gimmick is a selling point that is highlighted by a producer in order to generate interest in a product. Basically, an innovation is what made games like Journey so revolutionary and a gimmick is what single-handedly destroyed the reputation of Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah, the Kinect is a cool gadget, but I can't be immersed in a video game while moving all my furniture out of the way and flailing around like a spastic gremlin. The Kinect is a gimmick, and gimmicks are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I€™m not going to dust off my soapbox and wax poetic about the merits of the indie game genre, but I will say that being a part of a smaller, less capitalistic development team naturally leads to more organic and inventive ideas (Katamari Damacy, Ikaruga, Rez, etc).

Gigantic gold-plated franchises usually get stale after a while, which is usually when gimmicks are introduced as a means to stimulate bored fans, and get the attention of new ones. Tony Hawk did it with Ride, which came with a plastic skateboard peripheral loaded with low-quality accelerometers. The Nintendo did it with the Wii U, which features a touchscreen on the mammoth-sized controller that allowed you to look at inventory menus on a controller instead of a TV. And don€™t even get me started with zombies.

Want to play a tired tactical warfare FPS with zombies? Get Call of Duty. Want to play as an ex-mercenary cowboy who has to rescue his family€and then fight zombies? Get Red Dead Redemption. Even the first Borderlands, which I consider to be the best thing to happen to first-person shooters in ten years, had a zombie-related DLC. Modern gamers need to understand that innovation, not gimmicks, paves the way for a truly great experience, one that sticks in your memory and changes your perspective of what a video game can truly be. A player needs that moment of €œWhoa, I€™ve never seen that before€ if the game is going to stand out in a homogenous market.

And there you have it. Those are the ten subjects that I feel modern gamers should reflect on so they can avoid ignorance, lazy game companies, and other demons that have been spawned due to greedy marketers and useless products. Hopefully, by understanding why and how video games have become what they are, we can appreciate what they used to be. This was my first article contributed to WhatCulture.com, so constructive comments appreciated. I really tried to remain balanced and honest, but I'm sure I made someone mad, which was not my intention. These are simply my opinions and you are more than welcome to disagree with them. Thank you for taking the time to read it, and I hope you'll read my future articles as well. -J