Gaming is not something readily associated with moderation.  The idea of someone telling a gamer to stop playing games would be like saying they should stop eating.  The appetite for games is growing.  Consumption rates for games are at an all time high and production seems to be at its peak.  Conditions are perfect for game enthusiast right now and everything seems great, except it’s not.

Games are becoming stock and gamers are the primary cause.  With every new release, each game seems more and more like the last.  It’s somewhat depressing to think that the success of a finely crafted franchise like  Call of Duty has caused a type of creative numbness within the games industry, but the evidence seems irrefutable.  When millions people rushed out to get their piece of triple A military action, the only thing publishers heard was the sound of money.

And who can blame them?  The simple fact is that a publishers job is to bring in revenue.  Playing the market is their business and they’ve learned exactly how to milk the typical gamer.  As long as games focus on shooting big flashy weapons and have a multiplayer component of some kind gamers will keep buying.

So what?  Why should gamers be worried?  Aren’t big sales great for the industry? Sure.  Sales are great.  If first-person shooters are the single greatest game genre then gamers are in heaven, but what about creativity?  The creative process was once a fundamental piece of game development.  Developers wanted to create something new, places gamers had never seen or imagined, things they’d never done, experiences that left them in awe as they sat on their living room couches.  It seems unlikely that developers have lost the need to create, so there must be a breakdown somewhere.

Putting consumers aside, the relationship between developers and their publishers isn’t exactly built on trust.  In order to protect their investment, publishers feel the need to control the creative process and make decisions that can have a heavy affect the final product.  The need to control a game’s development says one thing about creativity, it’s dangerous.

Creativity in games means new ideas, and new ideas are an unnecessary risk.  Gamers give little reason for publishers to venture outside the familiar territory of the shooter genre.  Innovation just doesn’t sell.  Either from a lack of trust or just plain unawareness, gamers let original games fall by the wayside.  Even popular genres like role-playing and action platformers seldom sell as high as most shooters.  Only a few established franchises have a chance at surviving the current market.  The average gamer just isn’t diverse when it comes to gaming tastes and the mass consumption of shooters has left industry looking increasingly bland.

Still, the industry is not in trouble, not yet.  Though it seems inundated with a myriad of shooters, more is going on within gaming than there ever has been.  Big publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts, and THQ have started partner programs which give developers a great deal of creative freedom and even Microsoft and Sony are paying more attention to the Indie space.  The inclusion of the Indie section on the Xbox Marketplace, however clumsily handled, is a great step at getting these small time developers in front of the common gamer.  Not only that, but the Indie scene itself is bigger and more popular than it ever has been.

The real excitement is that gamers are about to see a new beginning for gaming.    Despite the current lull, the need for creativity will shine through.  The best thing anyone can do is to explore games as a whole, not just as different types of shooters.  Its time for gamers to balance their gaming diets.  While developers and publishers figure out how to best handle their business, it is up to everyone else to shape the future of the games industry as it grows past it’s adolescence.