Say what you will about game crunch, but would a little extra time be the worst thing for a game currently? Rockstar may be at the center of this “issue,” but why do they even feel the need to rush these games out? Are we hurting for something to play so badly right now that we couldn’t live without Red Dead Redemption 2 for another six months? In a year that has produced God of War, Spiderman, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Monster Hunter World, Far Cry 5, Black Ops 4, Detroit: Become Human, Sea of Thieves and many more games – is there anyone hurting for something to play? If you’re anything like me your backlog is so long it may even dip into last year (I’ll save you from another boring list of last year’s games). You get the point, there are plenty of games to choose from. Which makes me think of a question of my own – are there too many games?
I know most gamers will call party foul at the very thought, but truly think about it. I’m finally about to play Spiderman, which puts me at least 2 games behind on titles I want to play (at bare minimum). Sony and Nintendo have produced a plethora of titles over the past two years, more than anyone can hope to play if they are trying to live a healthy balanced life. This is just solely based on console games. If you are also into PC and VR gaming, you’ll have to quit your job to play everything that you want. This is a generation that coined the phrase FOMO and yet we continue to have more and more high-quality games released monthly if not weekly. At one point there were slow points in the year where the release calendar was pretty bare but this all changed about the time that Techland released Dying Light on January 27, 2015. Games of this caliber were generally saved for the holiday season yet there we were getting a AAA game released a month after Christmas – where games usually went to die.
So, what does this mean for gamers? On one hand we have lots of great games to choose from, parents have an easier time picking games during the Holidays, and developers continue to crunch games out to meet a deadline (unless your game is Crackdown 3… maybe a little crunch would do them some good).
Most of that sounds pretty great right? Okay, crunch is bad we know and unless you are a hardcore gamer that plans on playing every big game released a few more options might be a good thing for you. However, I would much rather see Red Dead redemption 2 release in the Spring as opposed to when it did in the fall if that meant the developers could work normal hours and I could get caught up on some other games without this constant feeling that I’m missing out until I finally get through my backlog. At this rate I’ll get to RDR2 just in time for Resident Evil 2 to be released. So, heaven knows when I’ll get to play that.
At the end of the day games are better than ever and while more and more games are released we never find ourselves without something to play. So, are there too many games? Absolutely not, but it’s okay for developers to take their time and let their game stew at a reasonable temperature while their employees work normal hours. In the end everyone wins, and my FOMO can finally take some much-needed time off.
