"Great novels live forever. Great games live only until the next great game."

Here's where I must disagree; people still play the old classics as much as ever. Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., Gold Box CRPGs, all of those old games still have sizable fanbases even today, and developers draw off of their many influences in creating the new batch of classic titles. Graphics may get flipped on the head every several years, but the gameplay of today is in many ways a conglomerate of the gameplay of thirty years ago.

I won't jump into the discussion if games are an artform or not ;)

I do agree in certain degree that too much can hurt the game landscape. Although it makes me wonder if it's not easier to look at the different genres. Just as music: there is a lot of new music coming out but if I don't like rap for example, a big portion of new rap coming out is just not on my radar. Isn't it the same with games? If someone is not into action/fps titles it already cuts down a big portion of new titles?

The novel is a medium that has not changed for hundreds of years, it's a common format that everyone supports. We face constantly changing platforms supported by multiple manufacturers who all do it a bit differently. I don't think we'll truly get past this "Great games live only until the next great game" phenomenon until technology brings us to a point where games are indistinguishable from real life, where it actually cannot get any better, and games never go out of date.

The platform itself is also a barrier to accessibility. I would love to play Grim Fandango, Starship Titanic, Twin Snakes, Day of the Tentacle... but I don't have the consoles/operating systems to do it. I can't even play Riven anymore because the newest Apple computers and operating systems no longer support the oldest games.

I wonder why the author felt the need to drag the platform wars into this right away in the first paragraph. It's a funny strategy to immediately alienate a whole subset of gamers in what's supposed to be a post about an industry trend. Frankly, to display that much ignorance about the issue really made the rest of the article seem impotent for me.

I recall reading awhile ago about how the video game market in the 80's had a similar eruption of titles -- right before it crashed. The author (or perhaps commentator, since really it's probable I watched rather than read) asked us why we shouldn't suspect such a crash again, especially with the demand to create a best-seller almost becoming necessity: a huge investment is only warranted if one can draw a huge return, let alone a huge profit. And if gaming has really reached a point where more games actually means less games played, it would be all the more reason for the industry to go through a pruning process, and to do so naturally without the need for any given company to make the decision themselves.

-- Or -- video gaming will assimilate the phenomena in the same way every other entertainment industry has (with the exception of the four major sports, which have remained separated from any other events that might stand as alternatives) and continue to offer more and more consumer choices, bringing the more successful models to the top, but still preserving the less-known, perhaps less-fortunate ones to float around in obscurity -- but not nearly nonexistence. And so long as they exist, they may certainly serve some benefit.

What it comes down to is, if our very lives are any indication of what success should look like -- that is, if the natural world, the most complex system we've ever witnessed, succeeds because of the presence of a diverse intertwining of alternative mechanisms -- then more may not seem better, but in the end might be integral to the overall success of the medium/industry/organism after all.

With a broadening of the audience and a proliferation of different games, the dominance of the gamer monoculture is coming to an end.

When I read this article, I think "Why the heck does dear Michael feel obligated to play all these games?" I know that for myself, it is a cultural thing. At one point being a 'gamer' meant being able to talk about games intelligently with other gamers. Like many young male pursuits, a gap in knowledge meant a loss of prestige. By knowing most games, gamers created a shared reference point that was the foundation of their association with one another. By playing games we preserve our membership in the gaming tribe.

As games increase in scope, play style and number, it simply isn't possible to know all games all the time. So a curious thing occurs. You run into people who game and you have nothing in common. "Oh, so you play those online gambling games a few hours a night. Umm, okay..."

If the literary world is any indication, there will emerge an elite group that builds lists of canonical titles that everyone must play if they are to be considered 'educated'. The vast majority of the audience won't play these games and instead will merrily consume entertainment in their own specific area of interest. The elite minority, longing for their past cultural dominance, will poo-poo the crass masses for their unsophisticated tastes.

In this best of worlds, games will have finally broken out of the niche gamer ghetto. It is a thing to be applauded. The existing gamer culture will fragment and adapt to this new reality of choice and variety. Entirely new cultures will emerge so that there is no longer a single 'gamer culture'. Thank god.

Danc.

I know I play a lot of games from around 1993 still... also a lot of Flash games that recreate experiences from that timeframe.

I know that there are plenty of games out there but with the constraints of time, hard drive space, and money I find myself playing and loving casual games and old games the most.

Excellent article, and thank you for articulating something that I've been feeling for a while now. I've started to keep a blog, and on it I have a list of all titles on my "pile of shame." It's a sort of motivational device. Every time one is completed, the list gets shorter. It's a gaming meta-game.

At the moment I'm working on removing Shadow of the Colossus from the pile, so imagine my delight when I saw the screenshot in the article here.

I am a middle aged gamer that grew up with Atari 2600 games. I agree completely with the article and some of the other posters. Especially the one about the early days where a gamer could play all or most of the releases. I too feel, now, the games are so much better and very long. That combination is making it hard to play all the games that are good let alone "all" the games. It's impossible.

But that's the way it is with movies or books. We could never read all the books or watch all the movies either. So we have to be more selective. I do wish some developers would shorten their games.

Also, Shadow of the Colossus is one of my games I am half finished with that is "interfering" with all the shrinkwrapped PS3 and Xbox 360 games I have to play.

I'm someone who has undergone the transition Zenke urges, and I couldn't be happier. I grew up gaming with classic NES titles; in college, I considered myself knowledgeable across the spectrum of games. Over the ensuing ten years, however, my gaming flame has burned less brightly.

In part this movement was financial: I made very little money coming out of college and couldn't afford a PS2 until two years after launch. I was, of necessity, a couple of years behind on new titles. This irked me at first, but I quickly acculturated. I played the old N64 and PS1 games I remembered loving, and discovered that I loved them still. I came to enjoy reading reviews, and two or three years lends ample time for many gamers to lend their voices as well. Since I now had a job and a girlfriend and adult responsibilities, the hours I spent gaming markedly decreased. At the same time, the pleasure I gained from gaming grew, possibly because I freed myself from the strictures of advertising and an aggressive subculture.

Today, I don't at all feel the need to keep up with the new releases. I don't own any of the new consoles, and I just last week updated my PC to be able to play Oblivion. I'm probably not a "gamer" anymore, although I certainly play games most days. My credibility as a gamer is long gone, but my life is richer and happier.

From my perspective, what's interesting about this post is the possible that Zenke is on to something big. Are his observations true only of gaming, or might they apply to any subculture (indie rock, for instance)? The root of the problem might not be the glut of games or the drive to consume them all. It might instead be obsession.

One of the problems inherent in video games is the sheer amount of variation when one looks at the individual experience. A game that takes an "average" player 10 hours might take 30 hours for a less-adept player or 5 hours for an incredibly skilled player.

While one could also make this argument for reading, rarely does one get to a page where just finishing the page becomes frustrating and time consuming. There are difficult books out there yes, but none so much that a person would be forced to put that book down. I can think of plenty of instances where I'd be forced to play entire passages of a level over again in an attempt to reach the next portion of the game. Flubbing a sentence in a book does not make you go back to the beginning of that chapter.

I think that if games could become more quantifiable (which, by its nature will probably never happen) then people would be able to organize their time with it a little better. When you put in a movie, you know how long it's going to be. A game that offers you a true experience needs to be played over a long period of time, and as such, is unknown as to how long it will actually take.

I've started referring to my video game collection as the next-generation book library - entire shelves of unfinished or barely started epics just taunting me as they pile up. I've even stopped most side quests (or limit myself to one or two good ones) simply to make sure I beat at least a few games a year. It's for this reason I don't criticize shorter games like Heavenly Sword which at about 8 hours I was about to beat only 3 months after buying.

The problem I find isn't that there's too many games, but many games bad their timeline. GTA IV, amazing yes, but if you have to drive the same road 20 times, it's still backtracking, even if you're in a different vehicle. Being able to fast travel like in Oblivion (without hunting for a taxi) might cut GTA's gameplay time in half. You can always drive if you want, but you don't have to.

It's ironic though to complain about getting too much value for your money. Spending $60 for 100 hours of gameplay is quite a deal and I manage to wrangle that out of several games, mostly RPGs, some puzzle games (Meteos for example), and GTAs. But I sacrifice other games, postponing them for so long that their appeal gets supplanted by imitators. It's hard to play the once engaging Rygar on the PS2 after enjoying the God of War games. Why play Killzone when Gears of War fixed most of the problems.

I don't want shorter games, just smarter games, and charge less. $30 for a 5-10 hour game. Not every game should have to be $60 as law. Let's be flexible.

I bought Castlevania: Lament of Innocence after Curse of Darkness, even though CoD is all of LoI and more, technically speaking. I also tried the first Devil May Cry after the third. Perhaps the difference between the gamers that stay up-to-date and those of us that can enjoy older games is noticing the "feel". Sure, Curse of Darkness has most of Lament's features, but Lament has a different feel overall. Hard to explain unless you don't stay up-to-date.

IMO, the game is suffering from identity crisis; today's games do not know what they are, so they mimic other art forms. Instead of using interactivity to communicate, it borrows techniques from others.

To hide this weakness, games try to overload audiences' logical perspective with sheer amount of content, and thus we have another crisis where it's impossible to enjoy what people amounts to "essential" titles for gamers.

While games being what they are today (hybrid of different art forms intermixed with interactive portions) isn't necessarily bad, the phenamenon described here and the lack of distinct identity certainly is bad.

Hope we see the day when we see more Passage, and less Metal Gear Solid.