A new study by GameTrack shows that the United States of America is still the biggest consumer of video games, with wider range and more frequent online gaming. This is in comparison to their closest competitor in the United Kingdom.

The study, run by Ipsos nMediaCT, shows that about 48 percent of American gamers play online with 42 percent playing packaged games play online games, compared 42 per cent who played packaged games. And that online gaming component is not just restricted to MMOs – 27 percent happens through the browser itself. Let’s not forget the 31 percent who also game via their smartphone and tablet apps.

UK gamers, on the other hand, still show an affinity for packaged games, which were the largest chunk of the audiences’ gaming time, followed by online gaming and apps. In online gaming, there’s no clear favourite as UK gamers play an equal amount of social games, digital downloads, MMOs and multiplayer titles.

Other countries like France, Germany and Spain also value the packaged medium more, though shares of the same are falling in the UK and Spain.

Source: GIBiz

Then MMOs came along. The genre truly exploded with Everquest, but it was World of Warcraft that took it to nearly cataclysmic levels. Suddenly, it was the dominant game on the PC, and arguably across all platforms at the time. If you ever spoke of PC gaming, most people assumed you were talking about WoW. However, on consoles, the focus had shifted. Suddenly, RPGs weren’t all about Final Fantasy. Other JRPG licenses started blooming, like the Tales series, which actually saw a resurgence thanks to it’s now action-heavy gameplay and anime-like story presentation.

Square-Enix had actually begun experimenting quite a bit with it’s core franchise, besides involving itself in the American/UK development side of things as well. Bethesda had effectively cast a Meteor of its own with Oblivion, which captured the hearts and minds of would be role-players everywhere. The game’s intricate detailing and character customisation, along with it’s huge, richly developed world, insured plenty of awards and accolades. Bioware left it’s D&D roots and created the Mass Effect series. Turn-based strategy RPGs were suddenly popular again. Side-scrolling 2D action RPGs like Odin’s Sphere even had their time in the spotlight.

However, flash forward to now. What are the RPGs that come to mind now? Well, there’s another Final Fantasy coming up, this one continuing the vein of cinematic excellence and watered-down gameplay that began with Final Fantasy XII. But that’s a very general statement. FFXII actually featured a Gambit System that made random encounters less tedious as the computer automated everything. The game world was still huge and open-ended. But the seeds had been planted, for better or worse (hint: It turned out to be for the worse).

World of Warcraft is still in the news, as it’s next expansion pack Mists of Pandaria draws near. Bioware is still working on Mass Effect, with talks of another game being developed for the same universe. Tales games are still popular and heavily anime centric. We’ve still got side-scrolling RPGs. Tower defence is a big thing these days. In the midst of it all, it feels like the RPG industry has settled into a very, very comfortable groove – one it seemingly has no intention of rousing itself out of.

Oh, we’ve got oodles of variety among different genres, for sure. But when you consider how many of these games are working off the mechanics established several years ago, till this day, it’s a bit worrying. Where did the innovation go? And no, we’re not talking Fable: The Journey, which is supposed to be Kinect based role-playing (on a side-note: Peter Molyneux before Black and White? Where’d he disappear?).

Perhaps the only real example of a developer trying to push forward with a base it established long ago was Bioware with Dragon Age: Origins – which was meant to be a spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series – and they eventually bungled that with the sequel. Maybe Gearbox with Borderlands, which is an impressive fusion of first person shooter and RPG. We’d name Bioshock as well, but let’s face it, System Shock 2 has it beat.

You could complain that other genres haven’t seen much innovation either. You could make sweeping generalizations along the lines of, “Shooters still make you shoot things. Sports games are the same yearly updates. Third person action titles are all Devil May Cry clones. Adventure games are still about adventuring.” And you may be right, since titles like FIFA and NHL still operate on the exact same mechanics, which have been tweaked and enhanced with a fresh coat of graphical paint year in and year out.

But honestly, think of games like Vanquish and Bayonetta. Resident Evil underwent a massive transformation just recently, and despite it’s reported shoddiness, at least Capcom wanted to try something new. How about Portal 1 and 2? Quantum Conundrum? And the very nature of the adventure game’s resurgence is amazing, because a decade ago, it was written off as dead. Even Max Payne changed. Batman: Arkham City, Heavy Rain, Okami, Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton – the list goes on.

The occasional atypical RPG has come along but nothing that’s really been a major game changer. As awesome as Skyrim maybe, it’s still an Elder Scrolls title like Morrowind and Oblivion.

It’s hard to imagine where the genre can go from here, and while the future isn’t necessarily grim on gameplay experiences. Borderlands 2 and Diablo 3 are a blast to play, and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII won’t sink the Square-Enix ship (one would hope). But that one new title that will break convention and go on to inspire other big-name games to do the same is yet to come.

“In my opinion, the whole game rating business doesn’t necessarily do a great justice to MMOs. MMOs are designed to grow over time and get better with every major release. It might be better if sites like Metacritic could find a way to rate MMOs by releases instead of just the initial day one. There are plenty of MMOs that have made huge strides since days one and some that have even gotten worse. Until then, we will continue to offer the game for free and ask for people to try it out and decide for themselves.”

Game reviews depend on a multitude of factors. Say it’s a game where knowing and experiencing everything within the game is tantamount to a useful review. Oftentimes, if the game is terrible, even for a good portion of the gameplay, it’s not hard to pan it even if the ending is gold (or unusual, as was the case with Inversion).

But MMOs are different – they are constantly evolving beasts, receiving fixes and additions like no other genre. A game like Mass Effect 3 may receive the periodic DLC update, but The Secret World needs to be putting out more new episodes and quests each month. It’s the very nature of the genre – if players have finished everything, and have nothing to do but level grind, why continue playing?

And then there are the patches and fixes, that might have made a previously unbearable aspect of the game quite fun. Some gamers might right off these little fixes as insignificant. But ask any fighting game fan who’s moved from one sequel to the next about balance issues. For ordinary people or reviewers, it may seem minsicule but for the gamers themselves, it could be worlds apart from what they played before.

How does one go about keeping track of every single MMO, be it RPG or shooter, with every new update and quest that comes about? Because our role isn’t to iron out every single possible scenario and then conclude if it’s just right. That’s a QA tester’s job. A reviewer should know if it’s fun or not, and if an update improves something, a quick run through of the game should be made to see just how different the experience is. But again, in order to notice the change, one has to be constantly playing these games, observing the nuances firsthand. Not an easy task when you consider all the other games that demand a reviewer’s attention.

However, in light of Stahl’s views, let’s look at PC games in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, which began demanding more patches than usual. Were those games, some buggy and unplayable, others featuring minor nuisances, judged differently? Was there a “scope for improvement” scale when evaluating a game? How much fun the game would be if all the errors were rectified? Understanding the core gameplay, and identifying what makes it fun is vital. So even if there’s less bullshit in the way of enjoying it, the game automatically goes up in value.

Then again, many games were looked down on at release for needing to be patched – it was even cited as a lazy route by developers to be able to ship on time, while working on fixes later. Why can’t they just delay the title and ensure it’s perfect, rather than shipping a buggy game and patching it later? Some developers even went ahead and did that, but such a tactic is unthinkable in today’s high-pressure, AAA environment. Maybe it’s the reason most blockbuster come to consoles first – a fixed architecture to optimise for reduces dev time significantly, not to mention the number of users is significantly higher for all consoles combined compared to PC gamers. But that time is being cut short, thanks to yearly sequels. Either way, don’t expect to see Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed delayed for any other platform but PC. In fact, when the first Black Ops was released simultaneously for PS3, PC and XBox 360, it was notorious for being almost unplayable on the former two.

Coming back to MMOs, should they be given special treatment? It’s definitely a worthy avenue to explore, even in a limited capacity, but shouldn’t be interpreted as a clean slate for devs. If the core gameplay wasn’t fun the first time around, no amount of polish or additional content is going to fix that.

Should MMOs receive the “only once” treatment when it comes to reviews? Cryptic Games and Star Trek Online producer Dan Stahl, in an interview with [a]listdaily disagrees. “In my opinion, the whole game rating business doesn’t necessarily do a great justice to MMOs. MMOs are designed to grow over time and get better with every major release. It might be better if sites like Metacritic could find a way to rate MMOs by releases instead of just the initial day one.

“There are plenty of MMOs that have made huge strides since days one and some that have even gotten worse. Until then, we will continue to offer the game for free and ask for people to try it out and decide for themselves.”

Source: GIBiz