11 gaming trends the industry can lose or embrace in 2018
By Martin Benn
Let It Go: Non-Curated Gaming Storefronts
Above is a video of PlayStation promoting Life of Black Tiger, a free-to-play mobile game with terrible graphics and nothing good to write home about it. A lot of the stuff now cramming its way into the PlayStation Store and making their way to the Xbox Store and the Nintendo Store is just like this: the same shovelware mess flooding onto Steam and mobile storefronts.
Imagine if a museum curator let any art exhibit at all come into the museum and they could just keep expanding the space on it. Imagine going to a store that sells you soap that is merely water with random rocks in it. Museums would lose all their luster and there are infinitely more things that are defined as “art” than games. Gaming storefronts have to do better about making sure they can both allow independent efforts to be published but some standards must be in place. They can do that and highlight those that are really good with a balance of those that are paying for marketing.
It cannot happen in 2018 that PlayStation promotes a Life of Black Tiger though. On the opposite side of things, more fantastic indie games should get highlighted prior to release. Making games is hard and the people who labor over Gorogoa are also listed with the likes of the team that slapped together Life of Black Tiger and released it to the public. It’s a shame to lump them together.
I do not envy storefront operators as creating the best curation service possible is difficult, but that is what consumers and publishers pay for. To have a storefront that is accessible and available to sell and peruse games. It seems the only thing missing from online retail is also the desire to make sure the product is good when so many people are submitting low-quality material.
Store curation exists on Nintendo, PlayStation, Steam, and Xbox, but relying on people to follow developers or personalities is not the same as actually making sure games function. Sure, give people the chance to get more personal curation from those people, but it does not dissolve the need to actually curate before any content hits the store.
There is one method of curation that is unique to online environments that we should all become more open to though…