With the 4th of July weekend upon us all let us reflect on U.S. independence from the tyranny of King George in style. Here's a list (in no particular order) of games that will set fire to your revolutionary loins.

Caveat: If you live outside of the United States you are cordially invited to join us in our annual nose thumbing of the English Monarchy.

Caveat II: If you live in the United Kingdom...well...you guys allegedly just voted for independence so you can celebrate too I guess!

BROFORCE

What bleeds red, white and blue more than nameless foreign terrorists dying in horrible explosions? What says "independence" more than destroying trees and even the land itself with guns and bombs? Defend your second amendment right to shoot fire with bullets to amazing effect! The logo has a bald eagle with American Flag wings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BIOSHOCK INFINITE

Technically it's America. It's America if we had decided to build cities that flew around spreading independence to all the godless heathens below (and didn't abolish slavery). Although the game was nothing like it's demo at E3 it's very good if not great and IT'S ON STEAM SALE UNTIL JULY 4th! (75% OFF!)

Coincidence? I think not!

Seriously though if you've never played this game it's very pretty and the story is enjoyable to an extent. When I beat this game I felt a sense of accomplishment. You may not feel good when it's over. Depends on your ideas about the story. Lot's of odd alternate universe/time travel story arcs. But I did find myself caring about Elizabeth, the woman you are trying to save.

This game could be considered "anti" U.S. since you do shoot a robotic George Washington in the face on a regular basis. But it does celebrate our love of capitalism and guns so I give it a pass.

It also gives a nod to American obsession with narcotics. The abilities (aka. Vigors) are a fun little thing to fool around with. I personally liked burning the shit out of everything with Devil's Kiss. Results may vary.

I will say the one downside is that false choices that run rampant throughout. If you are presented with a choice in this game it does not matter what you do. There is one path and one path only...utter destruction of all things. Which can be exciting if you just embrace it.

Red Dead Redemption

Ahhh the old west. Time to get on your horse and head to town for some drinking and whoring and gambling. When that gets old how about you shoot someone because they caught you cheating at cards?

This game would take every waking moment of your weekend to complete the story and then possibly some of the next two weeks to get 100% completion. But man...what a great time. See that bear? You can shoot it. See that wolf? Shoot it. See that guy near the bar? Shoot him. Wow. This game has everything.

It also has insanely long horse rides that will drive you crazy, and it's about 3 hours too long. Put that aside though. We're not here for some existential experience that will change our life. We're here to celebrate America and Freedom and this game serves them up on a steaming platter that's painted with the stars and bars.

SAINTS ROW IV

You begin the game as President of the United States and get a chance to pass a law known as "Fuck Cancer". Then aliens attack.

This game goes so far in mocking American culture that it actually comes full circle and becomes AMERICA cubed.

Although not as fun as it's predecessor in my opinion, the pop culture references and ridiculous side quests make this an enjoyable waste of time. With that said you may want to brush up on your late 80's and early 90's history so you don't miss the joke. The cameo of Roddy Piper alone is worth the price of...wait WHAT??? $3.47??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME STEAM?!?!

Anyways fuck it, if you don't want to play the game do yourself a favor and watch this video. You can send a thank you note to me later for making this the greatest weekend of your life (if you've seen the movie you'll agree...greatest moment in cinematic history).

Well, that's it. Four counts as a list in my book. I am on my second beer of 2,000 this weekend and I am going to go shoot some fireworks at my neighbors house. Have a fun and safe weekend! Please share some games that you think also embody this truly American holiday.

PS - Don't play any of these games this weekend. Go and celebrate in the summer weather with your friends and family.

A year ago I wrote how the gaming industry has been stifled by its own success. Essentially the AAA developers have decided that since the formula for Game X worked the first time, that means they have open licence to make Game X2, X3, X4 and on and on. There's no doubt this is successful most of the time in the gaming world and you can't fault the AAA industry making safe bets but the end result is a very limited gaming experience for the consumer. Indy developers are trying to fill the void, but over the past year it seems that may be losing it's momentum.

Let's take a look at this years E3 (and the "outside" shows)

E3

Watchdogs 2 - The "why?" sequel of games right now. Watchdogs fell so far short of it's expectations in the first iteration and I am surprised about it's return. Word is that the pre-orders of the first Watchdogs drove development of the second game. I am not sure that's a winning formula but time will tell.

Mafia 3 - The trailer looks uh...interesting...but I have no inclination to play this game whatsoever. Just seems like another shoot-things-be-a-badass-bring-nothing-new-to-the-table-game. The protagonist is African-American so perhaps it will actually do something interesting with the story to set it apart, but my faith in video games carrying meaningful and deep messages is very limited.

Styx: Shards of Darkness - I love stealth games. I own Styx. I never bothered playing Styx. So I can't really comment here other than...was the first one really so good that it deserves a second run? You tell me, I honestly have no idea.

Injustice 2 - "I suck at fighting games". Looks cool as hell but I don't play games where I repeatedly get my ass kicked. Just not an enjoyable experience for me. I don't have those sweet twitch skills. For all I know this will be the greatest fighting game of all times. Doubt it.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - This one I totally get. The Dues Ex series has consistently been good, huge fan base, and the cycle seems to be right (5 years). I anticipate this will be a good seller and a solid game (most likely what the game devs are thinking too). Perhaps the only concern here is "new customers". The first Deus Ex released in 2000. Therefore this iteration is 16 years in the making and a newcomer may not be inclined to go back and play a game that happened before the Afghan war started. It probably won't be necessary but a potential new fan may be turned off by the fact that to fully experience the lore they may have to go back to a time before they were born...

Dishonored 2 - A game I am actually looking forward to. As I said I love stealth games and Dishonored is one of my favorites. Very open ended game play, you could play in different styles which affected the outcome, and even the DLC was pretty solid. Highly re-playable and enjoyable. The second go around will have a second protagonist to play and that may add a whole other level of play that wasn't in the first. It's steampunk Hitman with magic. I don't know what else to say, I am excited.

Final Fantasy 15 - Fifteen. Enough said.

The "Other Shows"

EA

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Battlefield 1

Titanfall 2

COO Peter Moore called this an "embarrassment of riches". I hate to disagree here but the three games here in order are - An apology, a game with so many iterations they were forced to go backward, a followup to a game that had a very short shelf life. In my opinion not something to be bragging about. There's innovation in Battlefield 1 surrounding the era of the game play, not sure I can find much else in these riches. I'll play Mass Effect because I am a fanboi, however it just seems superfluous at this point. Other "riches" will undoubtedly include Madden, NHL, FIFA etc etc.

Nintendo's E3 video presentation could be the most bizarre of all time. No one has any idea what they are showing. They've said the NX is not going to be there and Zelda is pushed back to 2017 now and they just released new artwork. Who knows what is going to be at this presentation. Will they sneak in a new Mario IP? It could be 8 hours of technical blueprints. Who knows.

In the end though this reinforces the observation that new and unique gaming options from large developers are in short supply. This is not good for gaming. If the trend continues future E3s will reveal 5 total games that will all either be reboots or sequels to games we've all played in one form or another. Indie devs have a space here to make their own IP something unique and interesting that could fill the void, but some of those ventures are starting to take on water. No Man's Sky has been delayed, and although that is not a terrible thing it could be seen as concerning. I am starting to question the viability of the game itself. There's no doubt I will play it, however the scope may be too large. The game will center around discovery and travel, but you may never see another player in the game. I am not sure how that is going to work. Part of the enjoyment of open ended discovery games is sharing the experience with friends. That doesn't appear to be an option.

Meanwhile the henceforth referred to as "loosely indie" developer CIG, makers of "Star Citizen", is starting to look more and more like a confidence scheme every day. At the end of the day I am even starting to question the viability of this game as well. Almost everything the game promised to it's backers has been achieved in some form by other games (for example Elite Dangerous and even No Man's Sky) with the exception of the FPS portion and multi-crewed ships. However the game is so far from completion (if the alpha/beta is any indication) that this game may already be past it's time. When it finally hits the market it will be interesting to see how dated it looks and plays. Also for a game which boasts ultimate immersion...it's not even VR compatible, and Elite Dangerous beat it to the punch on that format as well.

So the future looks a bit grim for game development but time will tell. Minecraft remains the gold standard of indie development that managed to outpace the AAA world with a unique and fun experience. Ideas like that are out there waiting to be made, but recent history indicates it will have to come from the very cut throat and difficult indie world since the large studios are too comfortable and interested in making sequels and reboots.

SimCity released on PC in March of 2013. Hard to believe it's been 3 years. Why am I writing about it now? Because it's quite possibly one of the most frustrating gaming experiences of my life, and highlights some of the worst issues surrounding AAA game development. The game still exists, you can buy it from EA and play it still. The "Complete Edition" is available for $29.99 or you could pay EA $4.99 a month for "Vault Access" and play it however much you want.

What? You didn't know this? You weren't aware that SimCity is "Complete" or that it's been relegated to a rental property for EA? Neither did I. It seems the hits keep coming for this inductee to the "Worst Release" Hall of Shame.

Leading up to the release of the this highly anticipated IP it seemed like there was no way EA could screw it up. For starters they had Maxis working on the game. One would expect that the creators of the original extremely popular and well loved games would have some idea on how to make the next generation of the same title. Maxis/EA didn't always hit the right notes in their assorted "Sim(inputsomethinghere)" series, but "The Sims" and "SimCity" franchises were consistently successful and enjoyable. With the equation for success in hand, how did Maxis go from E=MC2 to 2+2= -213,412,123,643? For that answer we need to dig a bit deeper into the game itself and do some healthy speculating (since it's unlikely we'll ever find out what really happened).

Full Disclosure: It's entirely possible that somewhere the beans have been spilled about what happened but I haven't spent the time trying to find out and maybe after I post this I will go and see if there's any information and see if I was right (probably not).

So I played a lot of SimCity when it was released. I mean...like a LOT! I was so stoked by the games release that I overlooked the initial launch issues. The most notable issue being you couldn't actually play the game at first because it was online only and the servers were jammed. Now I don't know when this happened but as gamers we've been trained to expect this at the launch of online games. We've all had our favorite online IP drop, downloaded it and then sat staring at the "Connection Failed" screen at some point in our careers. At the time this happened with SimCity I just persevered and patiently waited until it was fixed. But with the issues that followed it stands as a seminal event in my gaming life when I started to question "why?". Can someone please explain to me how these major AAA studios create a game with massive hype, advertise it heavily, can project sales figures and in the end act "surprised" that their servers could not handle the load on launch day? I mean if it was the first time one of these studios launched a title like this perhaps you could understand it, but EA has a long history of online gaming and yet still can't figure out that when they bring the hype machine for a game to full throttle that means there's going to be a massive server load in the first days the game launches. But I digress...the inability to consistently connect for the first few days was the least of this games issues.

The true issue at it's core was the faulty AI.

Maxis and EA had been touting the new "Glassbox" engine as the most advanced simulation AI ever. They advertised that the sims in your city would all live in a house, have a place to work and go to stores. That each building you zoned would be crucial to the development of your city and choices you made not only mattered to your city, but also to the cities around you! What a marketing pitch.

The reality was that Glassbox could do a lot of things, but it could not do any of these things on a standard home PC. For a simulation to be as detailed as they advertised would require top end computing that virtually no one could ever afford. To try and skirt around this little fact Maxis dumbed down the AI so that our machines could do the calculations needed for Glassbox and in the end the problems with the AI slowly began to creep in the larger your city became.

To me this is where the ultimate frustration stems. It's almost sadistically sneaky the way Maxis and EA rolled out this flaw. As a new player you jumped right in and began building your dream city. At low populations and in a condensed area the issues with the AI cannot be seen. It runs as you would expect and this gives the player the feeling they understand how to play the game. But as your city grows and expands suddenly mass chaos descends and this makes the player think they have made a mistake. So for a time the player keeps starting a new city trying to figure out what they are doing wrong, when in the end the player is doing just fine, it's the game itself that is fundamentally flawed. To put it in perspective and make the point clearer I will provide some examples below. As I build the examples one on the other you will see that the game was broken to its very core.

So because the engine was made more simple it could not keep track of each citizen in your city as was advertised. The way one expected it to work was that a sim would move into a home. That sim would then find a job. That sim, based on it's income from the job would then shop at the appropriate commercial building, and then that sim would return home. This is a simple loop.

However imagine this simple loop needing to be done by 200 sims. The math behind keeping track of these sims gets pretty daunting for a computer to keep up with. It not impossible, but again we're just dealing with the most simple loop possible. The sims also have to fulfill needs such as leisure. So we add a fourth stop in the loop. And this stop is variable. What if Mr. or Mrs. Sim wants to go to the park before work, or after work, or maybe both? Now this stop in the loop can come at different and multiple times. The computer has to path this new variable in for each sim.

Things are getting very complicated and we haven't even begun to discuss things like the sim deciding to use public transportation or drive their car or walk or heaven forbid...they work at a commercial location. As more and more variables are added to each sim depending on factors like income or age or if the neighborhood they're in has too much garbage piled up...or their house just burned down, you start to see why the computations were just too much for a simple desktop computer to handle. From our gaming experience we know that AI has a hard time walking through a door let alone deciding if today it feels like having a walk in the park and then maybe doing a little shopping before it's time to go to work. Having a desktop compute these variables for a single sim would be difficult; so doing it for hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of sims was impossible.

Maxis and EA knew this. So they just made it simple. A sim would move to the city. That sim would choose a house based on income. He or she would sleep there. Then they would wake up and go to the nearest available place to work that met their need. Then they would go to the nearest place from there to shop that met their need. Then they would go to the nearest leisure place from that location and then...amazingly...they would go to the nearest house that met their income level to sleep. This meant your sims in all likelihood lived in a different house every night. They also worked a new job every day. You had a city of nomads.

Now on the face of it this was a simple way around the computing problem. The loops were no longer as varied and the computer could more or less keep the sims moving around and meeting needs. However even that had it limitations, and players later discovered that the number at the bottom of the screen that said your city population was not an accurate reflection of the actual amount of sims on screen so essentially there were "invisible sims". Again this was because even computing these small simplified loops became too taxing for a regular PC and even harder to display on the screen with any accuracy. The major flaw of the whole process however starts to come to light as you introduce more sims and more variables.

So let's say I've got a city of 10,000 sims and for arguments sake let's say I have set up the city so my industry is on one side of town, the commercial district is in another section and residential and parks are in a third section. This is a fairly common model that SimCity players have used in the past. So in the morning my city of nomads awakens to a new day. They all go outside and they all say "Today I am going to WORK!" So they all simultaneously start heading to the industry section (I'm keeping it simple here, no one works in commercialland, it's run by robots). Now as you can imagine the traffic going to industryville is going to be pretty bad, and as you'll see SimCity was at the cutting edge of simulating never ending gridlock. As the sims filter into the industry area they all go to the first available place to work. If there's an open spot they work there, if there isn't they move to the next job location they qualify for. They continue to do this snaking movement across the sector until either everyone has a job or there are no more jobs remaining. For those locked out of work they get no income and either return to the nearest residence or perhaps become a homeless person at the nearest park.

Well some sim hours go by and the Fred Flintstone whistle blows and the nomads leave work. Now it's time to SHOP! So they begin the snake routine to the commercial robot land. Again traffic is unreal but they fight their way through and proceed to go to the nearest place they qualify to shop until these are filled up or everyone gets to swipe their credit card somewhere. If they don't get into a place they return to the nearest residence.

OOOOK, now the home stretch. Time to go to the park or go home. In this instance they are in the same place. Traffic again is a nightmare, but they overcome and either go to the first park available and then the first residence or if they don't need leisure they just go to the first residence. Everyone is in a different home than they started with and now with their new location they are either closer or further away from the industry area which will have a direct effect on if they get to work at all tomorrow.

It's quite a life for the nomad sim, but it's only just beginning. Since this loop is somewhat stable and not as sprawling as it could be everyone at some point gets to work and shop and go to the park and sleep. So other than horrible traffic the city is doing OK.

But now let's ramp this scenario up to 50,000 sims. At this point the city of my imagination is quite sprawling. Without traffic a sim would be hard pressed to travel from one end to the other in a reasonable amount of time. With 50,000 other nomads, there is absolutely no way a sim could leave their home in the morning and get to work before it's midnight. Suddenly the "first come first served" model starts to come apart at the seams. Sims leave for work in the morning, sit in traffic for endless hours, many are unable to get to work in time so they suddenly either turn their cars to the commercial area, or if they have no money then they head back to the residential district. Now you have cars driving in all directions at all times of day and night. Nomad sims trying to get to an appointment they have no chance of making. The city itself starts to suffer. Homelessness starts to skyrocket even though there are enough jobs for everyone. It's not the jobs that's the problem, it's not even the location of the jobs. It's how the jobs are filled. Now if you've never played the game you may be thinking...well why not build public transportation! In the normal world this is a valid option. In nomad sim world this only makes the problem even worse and more ridiculous.

So we build up a bus system (because SimCity did not have subways!) which means we're introducing more vehicles onto our already over stressed roads. For simplicity sake let's say I do equally distributed bus stops in all three sectors. Well now it's a comedy of errors. For starters I have introduced a new variable to the loop. Secondly the nomad system is not meant to use public transit. Here's the example.

Sims wake up. Some hop in cars, others queue at the nearest bus stop. Because of the insane traffic bus service isn't exactly regular. So the stop gets awfully crowded. "Oh good, here comes the bus!" says a nomad. The bus can hold 100 passengers. Luckily for these 100 sims at the stop this is the bus' first stop of the day. They all get on. Now the bus goes to stop two. Which also has 100 nomads patiently waiting. Oops! Sorry guys, bus is full. So no one gets on the bus. Well now those 100 nomads say "It's ok...there's another bus stop over there. We'll just catch that bus!" Wait, what? No if the bus is full you wait for the next bus. You don't walk to the next stop because the same bus that was just full is going to be at that stop too! "Sorry player the AI says that if I can't get on the bus I have to either get in my car now or find the nearest stop and the nearest stop is the next one." Ugh.

So now you have a group of nomads who, instead of sitting all day in traffic and not getting to work, simply walk around the city all day from one bus stop to the next. They shall be henceforth called the bus nomads. So, the bus nomads who were lucky enough to get on the bus now sit in traffic with everyone else and most still don't make it to the industry sector in time. But some do! That's good right? No. Because as the bus pulls up to the first place to work that is suitable 100 bus nomads get out to go to work at the business who can employ only 15 sims. So 85 sims are turned away at the door. Guess what they do next? True to their new moniker they go to the nearest bus stop to hitch a ride (or try to at least).

So now not only do you have people sitting in traffic all day and not getting to work. Not only do you have people driving cars all over the city day and night and living in a different house each evening. Now you have a group of sims forever riding the bus or waiting for the bus. The game itself doesn't display it all the time, it performs cleanup routines for the day night cycle, but remember those "invisible sims". They're out there...forever trapped on the public transit system.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. The AI system that was touted as the next coming of simulation was the actual reason the game was so horribly and irreversibly broken. I say irreversibly because once Maxis and EA had let this genie out of the bottle there was no way to turn back. That's why they attempted to hide it.

But this really brings me to the fundamental question around this game. What happened? There was no way the developers were unaware of the limitations. As people who were on the ground floor of the games creation they were fully aware of the rules of their game world and it doesn't take a genius to consider just how bad the game would get once the AI had to deal with more complex cities. So why didn't they just scrap the whole thing and simply put out a SimCity with the same "eye candy" sims like in previous versions? In SimCity 2000 I could place residential sections on the moon and everyone would be able to get to work. The traffic was simply an equation of how many sims would be in an area at a certain time and I could alleviate it with better roads (or no roads at all) or public transportation but ultimately the traffic didn't completely destroy the way my city functioned it merely effected property value and happiness.

This is where speculation comes into play. The only conceivable explanation to me is money. Sad to say really but a hard truth of the gaming industry. EA had been pushing this new title around and the hype was building to increasingly higher levels. As the game developed I am certain someone saw the flaw and mentioned it. But making a change at that point would have been a major rework and lost time and money. EA probably pressed hard to have the game released as they were fully aware that the game would sell many copies on release even if it was a steaming pile of crap that ruined a beloved franchise. In the end that greed won out. This theory is further supported by the fact that EA was refusing to refund people who bought the game and realized what garbage fire it was.

That's precisely why this is my most frustrating game experience. Had this been done properly we'd probably be talking about the next SimCity dropping this fall or the current SimCity would still be getting updates and improving instead of being "Complete" and swept into the dustbin of online rental. This has set the franchise back significantly and possibly even killed it, and that makes me sad. I've been playing SimCity since before high school, and now it may be gone forever.

This posthumous look at the game is a reminder to us all that even our most cherished gaming experiences and the most solid of IP can be destroyed by a publisher who only cares about the bottom line.

Disclaimer: I am fully aware I didn't even touch on the issues of "always online", the horrible "DRM", the "small map size", the "no single player" and the litany of other issues around this game. But it doesn't matter. Even if they fixed all those issues (and they have fixed a few) the game is still fundamentally broken.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I meant to write here more often, but they ventured forth to other things. Well I am back and will post more...I promise. In fact, I think I will post something right now!

I know what you're thinking..."Oh great another internet jackass who considers himself a game critic." I hear ya, really I do. The internet is so chock full o' game reviewers and let's play's that the market is saturated.

But I hope this blog is a bit different. I have played games my whole life ("big whoop!" you say, "so have I!") and I simply enjoy gaming, and through my experiences in gaming I have formed a relatively well rounded opinion of games in general and where gaming is headed. With that said, I have no corporate sponsor, no insider information, and I certainly have no interest in reviewing games for a living. All the games I talk about are paid for out of money I earned working for a living, and therefore I can pretty much say what I want and the makers of the games can go pound sand if it offends them.

But I am really not intending to offend anyone.

Instead I am looking for an outlet. Not many of my friends game at the same pace I do and therefore talking to them about my gaming addiction is like talking about your kids to some single guy at a bar. Trust me (as a single guy without kids), the single guy does not give a shit about your kids, and my friends certainly do not give a shit about my gaming. So I am trapped with my thoughts on the games I play and this blog is as good a place as any to spew out a few ideas and frustrations and some inspirations I get from gaming. If others read it and enjoy it, then good for them, if others don't like my thoughts, that's fine too.

So with that said this first blog post I want to discuss my gaming preferences and what I currently see in the gaming industry that both inspires me and other things that drive me crazy.

It's tough to decide which foot to start off on the positive or the negative, so this will basically be a mix of both as I see them.

Gaming has a really odd history. It can be argued it's roots are buried deep in independent games. I mean the game known as the first great milestone of video games "Pong" was initially done on a oscilloscope as "Tennis for Two" basically as a side project by William Higinbotham. Even in the early years of Atari most games were coded and designed by a single person. You can't get much more indie than that.

Who's up for some OG gaming bro?

But after the gaming industry suffered a collapse in the early 80's the mindset of game creation changed to a more corporate format. Eventually the game production cycle followed strict rules and game creation fell under...and into...the PR threshing machine.

For a time this was a good development. Atari, which had adopted a wild west attitude toward game creation showed that without some guiding hand and oversight there was no way to tell if a game would be successful or not until it hit store shelves and either sold well or was returned en mass. E.T. is held as the prime example of a massive misunderstanding by Atari of its customers and its own limitations, but there were a litany of other forces at play which brought about the demise of the cornerstone that was the home gaming system.

But as time has marched on the corporate structure and mindset has begun to seep into the games themselves to their own detriment. This is evident by simply looking at the expected releases coming at E3 2015:

Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Borderlands 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Fallout 4

Forza 6

Gears of War 4

Guitar Hero Live

Halo 5: Guardians

Just Cause 3

Kingdom Hearts 3

Mass Effect 4

Mirrors Edge 2

Persona 5

Rock Band 4

Titanfall 2

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

If there is one thing that large corporations know it's what has worked in the past has a good chance of working again in the future. They have good reason to believe this too. Almost all of the games on that list will do really well and sell and make money for the corporations behind them. There's a very good chance that I myself will buy several of those games at some point and I will also enjoy them.

But there's something to be said about stifling creativity here. Once a game has reached it's 3rd go around it is basically the same game as it's predecessor with minor game play tweaks. Especially if it's coming out on the heels of the previous game only a year or two later. At least Fallout can claim it has taken some time off in between cycles to possibly have some good advancements in mechanics and graphics and add in some new game play twists to boot. But Assassin's Creed is coming off one of it's worst releases and might be jumping the shark by introducing a second playable character as some sort of new mechanic in a game that has historically been about a lone wolf assassin in some sort of time travel computer game.

"Wait until you meet my sister!"

I won't even go into the fact that of this list of 16 games, 10 of them are FPSs. It's an argument that has been beaten to death. Basically FPSs are really popular, companies are going to make FPSs and people will by FPSs. End of story. But my question is are they really THAT popular or is the real reason people buy them because basically that is all that is being made!

Quick, which Call of Duty is this? None of them, it's Battlefield 4: Second Assault

Anyway back to the original topic. The corporate mindset behind game creation and sales has left a very large hole to fill, and that's where the indie gaming companies have come to life (again). The very fact that a company like EA or Ubisoft will not take a chance on a unique game that could fail and instead focus all their attention on churning out the next slice of bread has left innovation and, you know, ACTUAL new game creation to small companies or Kickstarter campaigns. But truth be told? That is a good thing. At least for now.

A game like Pillars of Eternity would have never seen the light of day unless Obsidian had been push to the brink of oblivion. Cities: Skylines would not have ever reached it's massive success without the epic failure that was SimCity from EA. In both cases the smaller underdog company won out because it avoided the normal game creation assembly line and instead focused on what game players actually wanted to see in a game and were forced to work on a tighter budget so they cut the shit and just made solid games top to bottom. They took great chances too. Obsidian had no idea if the game it had pitched on Kickstarter was even possible, but once people gave them almost 4 million dollars they sure as hell made certain they delivered. They weren't accountable to stock owners, they were accountable to their peers, which happened to be fellow life long gamers.

Even in only a semi-3D setting that dungeon looks creepy as shit.

Beyond those examples are an endless list of indie game companies that have simply struck out on their own to create games that "they would play as a gamer". What an innovative idea huh? The mere fact that a companies that makes games for a living can differentiate themselves from larger game companies as "making games for gamers" and this view is widely accepted by the gaming community is quite an indictment against the AAA gaming studios.

As it stands right now I feel there is a relatively good balance, a ying and yang existence, between the AAA studios and the indie game companies and gamers are reaping the rewards. Additionally each indie success spawns more innovation from the indie community and eventually this will be noticed by the larger studios who may take a chance at some point and make a true blockbuster that doesn't involve shooting aliens or surviving in a post apocalypse.

But the balance stands on the edge of a knife, and the ones carrying the greater risk are in the indie field. It's not so much that an small indie release that flops will be a big deal, it happens all the time. For every Prison Architect there are 5 Day-Zs. The real risk lies in the Kickstarter indie games.

Pillars of Eternity panned out, and thank the gaming Gods it did. Had backers posted that type of backing and the game been a complete flop would have been a monumental blow to game crowd funding, but for now it remains strong. It's yet to be seen if the next expected milestone of a crowd fund game Star Citizen manages to live up to the hype. Again, if it fails the indie community will take a huge hit and the large studios will get to raise their nose and say "told you so".

So here's to the indie games, they are pushing the boundaries of where games are going more than Witcher 3 ever will, but we can enjoy Witcher 3 for it's production and story just the same while occasionally dabbling in the delicious world of Out There: Omega for it's simplicity and challenge.