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Good thing about not tweeting: you don't get a daily headache. Bad thing: you get stuck in the same loop anyway. Now it is the turn of overrated games. Curiously, I've seen the conversation shifting somehow towards influence. Is a game whose influence is bad (for the most part) an overrated game? Is a game whose influence is good (for the most part) a good game?

First point: who cares about pioneers when talking about whether a game is good or bad. I'm all in for giving credit where its due, whose game influenced what and what was the first game to do whatever. But what is the influence of a game that did something 20 years before the others if it didn't reach anyone else? Ah, but we are not talking about the unfortunate games that get lost in history, we are talking about the real innovators, the ones who put something new into the table and changed videogames. I'm going to ignore for obvious reasons the games whose influence is of questionable value to make it easier. Let's go for consensus: Miyamoto. What a pioneer right? Like everyone, he was influenced here and there, but you have to put a very thick blindfold to say that Super Mario or Zelda weren't influential at all or that they didn't do anything "new" in their own way.

Well, it doesn't matter. As I said, I'm in with the influences being documented and recognized, but influence and innovation don't mean "genius". How many people were able to do games with as much freedom as Miyamoto in the 80s? 1000 people and being generous? Ok, he was a "genius" between those 1000, granted. Now go to 2000 onwards, with game making being more accessible. A computer and an internet connection allowing: creating games in RPG maker, creating Flash games, etc, and sharing the games for free worldwide. How many "masterpieces" did the "genius" Miyamoto gave us when making games was easier than ever? Did he even made any games on the last 20 years or was he enjoying being a producer and making theme parks of Nintendo, of all the shitty big corporations in the videogame industry? It seems that when about millions of people are able to make games the "genius pioneers" fade away, what a coincidence. To me Adam Le Doux making a very accessible new way of making games with Bitsy is far more valuable in influence than whoever is experimenting with VR making a game that will only reach people who can spend thousands of dollars on tech nonsense.

I'm able to give the benefit of the doubt with some of the more recent games. If someone manages to do something "new" and even influential (for good) today without like thousands of dollars on their back I'll give it to them, they played it smart (doesn't mean that the games they do will be good anyway). But when we are talking about lucky people in lucky places I very much doubt that they were pioneers and not just looking for a way to make more money that allowed them to keep "innovating" in order to make more money that allowed them to...

Does that make Mario or Zelda bad? No, I personally like them for what they are, but that will obviously change from person to person. I'm against being conservative and blindlesly following the norm because "it works" without questioning. But I am in favour of not reinventing the wheel if you don't need to. Go ahead and rip off a shmup if you want, I'll be more interested than with the next elonmuskian innovation that leads nowhere good.