[Faile]

Harry! Thankyou for taking the time to post. I wasn't sure if anyone would pick up on my mis-typed missive, and also if anyone would even think it worthwhile to reply to.
Trouble is I'm a lazy sentimentalist (or plain mentalist perhaps) who tends to pine for old things, and here we are.

Thankyou for your kind comments regarding c&to! We're trying hard and it tires me out a lot, but like you, we're a band of people who believe in art being of a high purpose. You're a lot more articulate than me, so I hope you understand that I'm not being bluntly pretentious, we just really care (4 real /m.s.p). Thankyou for the linkage too, it's really appreciated! When we finish the new cd (maybe this month), I'll send it your way. It's a lot better I think!
But I digress!

I really hope you don't think my comments and quoting of you was aimed at you, or a dig at your site. It wasn't at all. It's more a call to arms to various people, like me, who have been silent over the years, who maybe didn't do what they could have in the past to help move things. It was my love of the past that brought me across the quote above, and that lit a real fire in me because it shouldn't have been this way for this beautiful site, with its beautiful community. You deserved more from people like me I feel; the aforementioned lost souls. In many ways it is us that have driven you into problems! I apologise for this…

It's a curious world whereby a gamecube with a bluetooth controller and a very small n64 with a touch screen can rule, when you think back to the fanfare of playstation2 and the huge trailers for it, and everything else. Gaming went mainstream and then hopped back because the mass market just wanted plain old fun. I like this schadenfreude, but then I guess it's also responsible for curtailing vision. Then again, you get the other side of the drive at the mainstream – your gears of war 2 cinematic trailer, which pretends to be humanistic, but is really just a shooter after all (surprise!). Wolf in sheeps clothing, if you will. The old franchises like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy look a bit lost in amongst the new pretenders, and with spending on videogames going up and up on a year by year basis since 2004, you’ve got to wonder why we’re not living in an age where experimentation is welcomed. With a greater market share, surely there is more hope for the indie dreamers? Of course, as you say, the wii and iphone scenes welcome this (how ironic that apple, who resisted gaming for so long, would be the agents of grassroots development).

I’ve found it disappointing though that the indie developers who have had the success have done so without real innovation. Companies like Popcap have won acclaim for picking up non-gamers, but they’ve hardly done it with huge changes. How many times can you reinvent Tetris? Perhaps I’m being cruel. Perhaps for every 10 games that do well conservatively, you can make one off the wall game.

And of course, there is that other brand that has done very well over the last few years: Guitar Hero. I kick myself for not spotting it when I wrote the videogame & music articles all those years ago. GH has done amazingly well in picking up non gamers with such a simple gameplay angle. Perhaps if Sega had gone for the band angle over angling, they would still be making consoles today. For what it’s worth, I do enjoy the GH games. Great party and social games, and I love singing along. Of course I already play guitar so it’s not eating out of my potential musical development, though perhaps that isn’t true for everyone. I’d need to check the articles again, but I’m pretty sure I would have put my money on music and videogames being linked together a whole lot more, but I don’t think I would have imagined to the extent whereby Metallica and the Beatles get their own games...


Trouble is though, I’m as big a sucker as the rest of them. I still buy at leats one EA sports title every two years. I love soccer and Pro Evo doesn’t cut it anymore. And strangely, for my Britishness, I love Ice Hockey. They are polished titles, and good recently too. But you’re right, they’re soulless. This is why I still play an old Amiga title from the mid nineties for my major sports kicks, via xbox arcade. And here is where I think things get interesting. You make a good point that the ps3 is pretty similar to the xbox – however, with the xbox I feel something else is present. A willingness to be nostalgic and allow to get at old games via the arcade. Sure, the ps3 probably has this option and blu-ray, but it seems to be aiming at the elitist gaming crowd. The xbox is at a wonderfully low price point to the stage whereby Microsoft almost seems willing to subsidise the gaming community. The split here is interesting, and whilst both are good consoles (and I’d never argue for one or the other), I feel the successor to the dreamcast (as mentioned above) is the 360. Whether or not I’d have said that before I owned one though…

I really hope the forum does remain here, and we can fight back against the spam bots! Good things deserve to live for a long long time… To this end, if I can help beyond posting here, please let me know. If you need a regular donation, I can make this happen. Even if things go no further, you're still responsible for the upkeep of this forum for the silly people like me who were never grateful enough at the time. Let me know!