The Newsweek website has just posted this interesting article. It's about how games companies are finally addressing the consumer lethargy that hits at the end of every hardware generation - and not just by bringing out endless film licenses.
I've written about this age-old problem in my Technology column, so it's interesting to hear about some pro-active measures - even though the piece concentrates heavily on EA. The giant publisher has moved into the Korean online gaming market, creating a multiplayer-only version of its FIFA series, and recently purchased mobile veteran, Jamdat, to get a hold on the mobile sector.
The most intriguing section though, is where Criterion's shooter Black is analysed:
"The first step in navigating the transition is for developers to be a lot more shrewd when crafting games for an increasingly jaded audience. With Black, [Alex] Ward and his team decided to go retro: they stripped the shooter genre back to its essentials--guns and destruction--and built a single-player game where the levels aren't simply a static backdrop, but shatter and crumble as the player empties one ammo clip after another."
Of course, this reflects what reviewers have been saying about the game, but I hadn't thought of Criterion's design as being so intricately targeted - not just at a specific audience, but at a specific audience in a certain state of mind at a single point in time. There's something quite Fin de siècle about it...
