The First?

My name is Chris and I enjoy discussing video games...a lot. It's an obsession that started back in 84 when i was given an Atari for my birthday.I was 3 and I didn't understand it then, but it was the start of a life long enjoyment of the virtual arts.

Introductions (albeit slight) out of the way, I'd like to start my first post of with a topic that is entirely far to prevalent in almost every journalistic forum that covers the medium...

The Dumbing Down of the Industry

If you read, in any capacity, any sort of Gaming News journalism then I'm sure you've come across this quite a bit recently.
What does it mean?
Why is this something to be feared instead of embraced?
What needs to change?

Well for starters it means that as time progresses and more and more companies attempt to cash in one of fastest growing entertainment mediums that the market is going to see a glut in something I call "Lazy Development" Titles. What this is doing is essentially spamming the market space with crap and making it harder and harder for the consumer to find quality titles to purchase and play. Now I fully understand that My definition of "Crap" may differ quite substantially then most peoples but seriously why the hell is Wii's My Fitness Coach almost outselling Shadow of the Colossus?

I guess it might be due in part to the growing up of our generation, you know people not having as much free time to devote to gaming. Perhaps is the Wii, bringing those that enjoy the idea of gaming but not in the sense that they would sit down for hours on end trying to level all the job classes in FF Tactics to max for shits and giggles. (I didnt do that...>_> <_< ). Whatever it is, it saddens me to see games like SoC go relatively unnoticed while Wii Fit blows off the shelves.

These "Non-Games" are becoming the norm and they are cluttering the shelves pushing the games I'd like to play to the wayside more and more each year. Developers are being pushed into making titles like these because publishers see these as a low cost, high revenue entrance into this disgustingly overpriced market. Quantity over Quality.

I'm dreaming of days long past where I was excited to see the development progress of a game I realllllly wanted to play. But in addition to this increase in the "Non-Game" I'm seeing developers waiting longer and longer to release info on games. Which means that of the Magazines and Sites I frequent the info being published gets lost amongst the hype and I never really get to fall in love with a game anymore. Watching the progress of Oddworld: Abes Oddysee was one of the defining moments in my gaming history. I still have the stack of 10 or 12 magazines from the time period with spreads of concept art, amazing dev interviews and drool inducing screen shots. Now we are lucky to get a 2 page article.

I believe this is because of this lack of long term info leaks. Now all the info for a game is released 6-7 weeks before release in an effort to generate hype creating a limit in real estate for any sort of journalism. In essence more games are being reviewed but with a lot less info going into each article thereby eliminating any sort of romance and I like romance.