Predictions Fail: 2015 - 16 Edition

Every January, I make predictions about the video game industry for the following year. Of course, these types of posts are no fun unless they are revisited a year after. For today, I would like to revisit lastyear's predictions for 2015 and see if they came true. Honestly... they were hit-or-miss. Mostly miss...

The (de?)evolution of Final Fantasy - Part I

The original Final Fantasy was released  on December 17th 1987, almost a year after the first Dragon Warrior. Following the Dragon Warrior formula of swords and sorcery fantasy but improving on the exploration and battle mechanics, Final Fantasy quickly became a prominent name in the RPG genre. Featuring a turn-based battle mechanic and a large and somewhat open world, the game tickled the imagination of those fortunate enough to play it.

Since this first title, the franchise has undergone many revisions. Many fans of the series, as does my friend, have commented on how the series began an exponential rise in quality which peaked somewhere between Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII, and since then the series has been in a steady decline. I'm here to argue that this is not the case, that the history of Final Fantasy and the quality of its (main, numbered) games is filled with ups and downs, and that, if graphed, it would look more like a cordillera than a lone peak. 

Gaming Period Pieces

Videogames have been the source of much debate. From one of the greatest film critics saying that videogames cannot be art (rest in peace, Ebert) to one of the most prominent videogame scholars saying that videogame analysis should focuson ludic elements to a top videogame scholar creating a reductive taxonomyauthoritatively stating what is and is not a game (a taxonomy that, curiously, supports his claims that videogames are not about story, and you can thank Jesper Juul for this one), people have seen videogames as a mechanics-only form of media that is somehow less than otherforms of art. Of course, not everyone agrees with this. People ranging from scholars attempting to establish a videogame canon to museums creatingvideogame exhibits to scholars exploring the narrative potential of videogameshave also explored the non-ludic aspects of gaming. One such aspect that has largely been left unexplored is whether games can incorporate literary or artistic traditions into their design. For this piece, I will hastily attempt to answer the question of whether videogames can be period pieces.

Steam Machines? For Whom?

Today I want to talk about the Steambox. In the works for a while, a Steambox is somewhat of a cross between a game console and a personal computer in the sense that it runs a proprietary version of Linux and its main purpose is to play games purchased through Valve's highly overrated online distribution platform known as Steam. Techradar, Digital Trends, and other places have raved about these machines at length. They are put together by third party companies and sold at prices ranging from $500.00 to almost $2,00.00. I don't intend to make announcements, or even rank the different boxes in any order. Instead, I want to raise a question: who, exactly, is the target audience for these pieces of hardware?

Gaming in the 90s

A few weeks ago I wrote a rant about how gaming during the 80s was great because each system had its own personality as shown through different games, as opposed to today where all the systems have essentially the same games with a few exclusives. Read it over at Pop Trends (or wait a few days until I feel like putting it up here). I left it at a hint that I would later write about THE Console Wars, and then disappeared. I apologize for disappearing, but here I am now!

Tadah!

So... 1990s... 16 bit...