Remember back in the olden days when a games most important statistic was fun? I sure do! Now I don't mean to sound like Bill's "Jaded Gamer" (Bill BTW is working at PSM now), but what the hell ever happened to the Fun Factor? Even Gamepro, the lame ass publication that it is, had a rating for fun factor. Now I need to let the gaming community in general in on the fact that just because what makes a game fun is an intangible quality, that does not mean that it doesn't exist! Fun is the Numero Uno reason that many people are playing video games.

Now I happen to remember the very first RPG that I purchased for the PSX was absolutely no fun at all. NONE. Just ask Iceman. He watched me play for a while (along with Wuerfel) and just be amazed by the simple fact that the game I had just shelled out 60 bones for was not only so-so but there was no feeling of caring whether I ever played the game again or not! Here is the really sad part. I wanted to like the game. More than anything I wanted to like it, it was the only console style RPG available for the Playstationary at the time and I love RPGz first and foremost. But not only did I not care about the characters, the spells sucked, the battles sucked, the story was boring and after 12 hours of playing I STILL didn't care about the story, the characters or the game. Wow, that's fun. Luckily, I bought the game at Software Etc. which allows you to return a game, for any reason whatsoever, within the first 72 hours of ownership (p.s., I don't know if this is still their policy).

The point of the above statement is this. If a game is not fun by any stretch of the imagination then why bring it out at all? Isn't the point of video game playing to have fun?

Well not so much anymore I am assuming from all the "me too" crap that companies put out. Sequelitis shows no signs of abating and that means a stagnation of innovation. Some industry pundits would have you believe that the bloating of the PSX software market is a harbinger of a crash of the likes of the Atari 2600 era. Not so. The 2600 was the only established platform when "The Crash" happened back in the mid-80's, sure there was Colecovision and Intellivision and YourMommaVision but none of them had the clout of Atari. Atari dropped the ball, plain and simple. Too much crap and all that rot. Cheerio!

I digress. The Blackest Day in VideoGame history is another column for another time. My original point was FUN and where exactly is it hiding out. Don't ask Nintendo cause, quite frankly, they have no idea. The only fun Nintendo has going for them right now is called Miyamoto and lately his hit ratio (in my opinion) is about 50-50. For every Zelda there's a Yoshi's Story lurking somewhere near. Do not get me wrong, Miyamoto is a genius but he does not have (nor wish to utilize) complete total domination over his products. He prefers a more relaxed and team like atmoshpere. Still I must admit that Nintendo hits hard when it does hit. The problem really lies in the 3rd party arena. Everyone who is licensed for the N64 is not willing to take creative chances. It costs too much. Result? More of the same same and more tired old formulas for vidz. No real innovations to be found here.

So you would say to yourself "Well with about 25% of the licensing fee, less production cost, and lots of produced games all the way down into the single thousands then the PSX would be where to look for innovation!" Well you'll have to look awfully damn hard cause as soon as someone has a "hit" on their hands with the Sony machine they are already working on "hit" part 2. Instead of coming up with innovative and new ideas with the profit that a successful title brings in they think of how little they can change the game and how they can tweak the engine and slap a 2 or 3 or 4 on the end of the title and get people to buy it thinking it is an all new game. Wow, what fun!

The truly sad thing is that games that are innovative and fun are generally from smaller developers who don't have the resources and capital to launch a large ad campaign or contests or anything like that, so their title gets left in the dust cause all the little bastards around the country want Crash 4 cause it looked cool on TV. Even on the occasion that the small title goes big time it then falls into the "sequelitis" category and the company uses all its resources to churn out another game with the same engine and minimal tweaks to cash in on the originality of the first title. and the cycle continues.

I want a game that drives me to play again and again. A title that I want to pick up versus dreading picking up. A game that takes me by the seat of the pants and doesn't let go until it's all over and then was good enough to want to do all over again. A game that makes me seriously consider staying home from work to play. I want a fun game and I want it now! If a game is good the gamers will come. Maybe not in droves at first but word of mouth is so much more important now a days than 10 years ago because one persons opinion can reach hundreds to thousands thanks to the Internet and pages like mine. Make a good game and it'll work out.

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