The recent release of FIFA 12 got me thinking about something that every now and then makes its way to the foreground of my mind: ‘Why do people buy every edition of their given sports game(s)?’ This has always baffled me and the massive rush to grab the latest version of 'wimpy boys kick a ball around' shocked me, I expected it to do well but nothing close to quite how well.
To clarify I have nothing against sports games whatsoever. I can’t hit a homerun off of Justin Verlander but in ‘MLB:The Show’ I can, I can’t score past Roberto Luongo but in ‘NHL’ I can, I can’t throw a pass to Adrian Peterson but in ‘Madden NFL’ I can… you see where I’m going here right? Sports games give you the opportunity to ‘be’ as good as the people you enjoy watching play the game for real. The argument that you’d be better off going out and actually playing the sport in question is also ridiculous; they’re two very different things. For starters you can’t just go out and play a proper game without prior planning or enough friends with nothing to do to make up both teams, if you wanted to play football (I refer here to proper football not the soccer variety) that’s a lot of people to gather up, and that’s before you even get to the fact that you are not as good as you can be in a game.
That said it doesn’t explain the need to purchase the game every damn year when pretty much the only difference will be some players will be wearing different colours, there might be a new one here and there, oh and of course the number on the cover will be one higher than the last one. I’m beginning to think it’s the number thing that actually makes the difference; people instinctively associate the higher number with higher quality. This is of course nonsensical, compare Final Fantasy VII to XIII for proof of that, but I’m sure it must have some truth to it. For all the claims of exciting new features and whatever is ‘game changing’ about the current version there is likely to be very little that fundamentally separates the newest iteration from the previous. Of course every now and then there will be an exception, this years ‘F1 2011’ for example brings in the rule changes that actually impacted the sport so was necessary, and maybe this FIFA is the one in however many that IS different in some way… I can’t give an example how since I have as much interest in the game as I do in choosing carpet samples but it doesn’t change the fact that the people who would notice the difference already have or have had the last 3 or more versions of essentially the same game.
So I propose another option (shock, applause, sharp intakes of breath etc). Don’t buy the game every year. Instead, and here’s the crazy part so bear with me, buy one then wait for the one in three or four years time. Give either the companies time to actually make the game better or at the very least change something noticeable. Possible exceptions can be made if something in real life happens that should change the game. Again I cite F1 as they have made a variety of changes to the sport this year that made the sport itself very different and thus the game should follow suit. Sorry did I say it was the crazy part? My mistake, I meant to say ‘logical and sensible part that saves you money or let’s you buy something else’, in this case I offer Rage this week, Forza 4 next week or Arkham City the week after. I’d say Skyrim but that’s a bit far away for now, though it’s going to be approximately 10000% better than whatever EA threw out on Friday, just LOOK at it and see. Go on do it. I’m off to watch the trailer again, or the gameplay footage… screw it I’ll watch both.
No comments:
Post a Comment