Mid-Tier Games Deserve A Resurrection
During the slow release schedule of 2021, I’ve recently been diving into classic video games from the 00’s, and you’ll be shocked to learn a whole lot of them stand the test of time. There were ideas abound then, and everything sort of generally felt less safe. Jump button on the “Y” button for an Xbox game?! Why did that ever make sense?!
I miss messy games, straight up. A game like Darksiders was never going to compete with The Legend of Zelda in terms of quality, but that’s okay. It was a fun, new world that provided a few hours of memorable content. Mid-tier games like Lollipop Chainsaw or Shadows of the Damned don’t set the world on fire, but they do give this medium we love so dearly more color. Every game can be somebody’s favorite.
And because things weren’t as figured out about what was generally considered good or not, publishers swung for the fences more often. Things that define a genre nowadays, such as open-world towers or ironsight aiming in shooters, weren’t ever-present even ten years ago. An RPG game like Sudeki would never be published with its budget today. We exist only in the era of the hitmakers.
The common defense for this is ballooning costs of game development. But here’s the dirty secret that every publisher and developer refuses to admit: nobody really cares about technical fidelity. Sure, we consumers care at the start of console generation, but that’s only because we have to convince ourselves we made a smart purchasing decision.
You need only look at the sales numbers of the most popular games ever, such as Minecraft, Tetris, or even Grand Theft Auto V. These games have remained consistently popular through their originality and strong ideas. Would God of War (2018) have sold a million fewer copies if it didn’t look as strongly as it does? I don’t think so, and I haven’t talked to a single person whose love for that game was wrapped up in its photorealistic presentation.
As I replay Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, I don’t care that my lightsaber isn’t casting a color hue on every piece of the environment. I care about Bastila’s arrogance as a strong, young Jedi. I care about the unique and engaging meld of Dungeons and Dragons dice throws with cinematic animations. Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge looks blocky by today’s standards, but contained within it a fascinating world centered around biplanes. Dark Void is an eight hour shooter with a lean design focused around a jetpack, not a bloated 20 hour RPG weighed down by a meaningless skill tree.
I wouldn’t dare say there isn’t the chance that subconsciously the constant graphical upgrades somehow better immerse players. That very much could be a possibility. But I refuse to believe these ever-growing budgets for AAA games are necessary. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in game development that every hit demands a bottomless budget. The mid-tier games didn’t go away because of a lack of player interest, they went away because publishers got obsessed with only having hits the size of Call of Duty.
It has consumed every facet of our popular culture, especially cinema. $200 million in profit is no longer good enough, and movies need to make nearly a billion dollars to be considered worth the studio’s time at all. These models simply are not sustainable. You can call me a hypocrite if you’d like because I love Star Wars or DC Comics, but we truly have become too reliant on the big brand names.
Just think about a hit as massive as The Matrix was, and ask yourself honestly if it could ever be made today. Do you honestly think a property as huge as Mass Effect would even have a chance to get made these days? We live in a world where Sony Bend can have a massive hit with Days Gone, exceed every sales goal, and still be told to be a support studio on The Last of Us. Because mild profitability isn’t worth it anymore. Ideas are no longer worth the risk.
