However, he also addresses the gaming industry as a whole, commenting on a pattern that seems to apply to games failing to live up to the hype:
The pattern that Sulla is seeing is very accurate, but people remember that is describes an effect of some other cause. It does not actually explain the cause itself and thus it can only tell us what went wrong, not how to truly and fundamentally fix it.
In that sense it misses the point. We gamers miss the point. If we want to fix something, we must get to the cause. What is the cause? Whenever there is a issue, look to the cause not the effect and the problem will be resolved it is that simple. But what is the true cause?
It is our mind that generates unrealistic expectations (and believe me they were unrealistic!) We keep looking to something external to us (like a game) to fix our woes and make us happy. We have been taught to do that. But we never find that "thing" not because we are blind, but because there is no such thing (it does not exist). We keep searching for it not because we are stupid, but because we are quite naturally creatures of habit.
We restore peace of mind by focusing on the cause of the problem (our perception) and stop focusing on illusions that do not work. Why would we want to get ourselves happy ever searching for a fallacy, a mirage of the way we think, an effect of a hidden cause we do not see but that is right between our eye balls? We start to take responsibility for our heads, the true cause, and we need go no further than that! All our expectations will then resolve peacefully.
We would relax. We would get less hyped (because the resolution to our problems is always available and we do not have to buy something to fix it any more (although we still will might wish to buy something and do buy things). The gaming industry (a system that does whatever is necessary to sell games) will temporarily fight back with a few more temptations for a while. It is content for us to spiral into the happy/sad cycle so that it can sell games not because it is evil, but because that is the gaming industries habitual response to the habits of gamers that have insatiable needs and expectations from their games.
But the industry is yet another end product, an effect of our mind, we make the industry and it is a by-product of how we think. If we were to calm down and relax by focusing on the true cause of our problems...
(a mind that that continually looks for something other than itself, to fix itself)
...the industry would respond and it's habits would change in response and the hype would be less intense. The marketing departments would change their strategy and you would find that the quality of the games would probably improve again because there would be less heat and more light. There is light when we are inspired and we are inspired when we get to the cause of a problem and fix it. That is when we get inspired. We do not fix something by hacking at it and then throwing it in the bin (there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Civ5 except for what we expected of it). We fix anything and everything by getting to the true cause. That is when we can start to enjoy games again and that is when the "quality" of the games will improve (where our expectations by and large match with what the game delivers and visa versa). The rest is just a vicious spiral of happiness/sadness always missing the point unwittingly spawning an insatiable gaming industry that feeds on our unrealistic desires.
But I don't know that and I am describing an idea that exists in my mind (an effect of the way that I think) and as such it may have truth, but it probably does not work in the way that I think that it does.
Cheers
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