Not A Good Time To Be A Gamer

It is definitely not a good time to be a non-twitch gamer these days.  Case in point...

• Looking at the list of PC game releases for the next few months, the only games I'm even remotely interested in are Max Payne 3, Tom Clancy Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (now, isn't that a word salad), Carrier Command: Gaea Mission, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.  Which doesn't sound too bad...except that's about four games out of a couple hundred.  And, none of them have the grand scope and sweep of Supreme Commander, Sword of the Stars, or the intense action as what Half Life 2: Episode 3 should be.
  
  (Assuming Half Life 2: Episode 3, Manchester United 0 ever comes out...)
  
  Hell, nothing is coming out that looks like another version of Portal and Portal 2 (something exciting and does something different).  Which is irritating...and, let's not even get me into the whole DLC dime-bagging that seems to be the new business model of game companies-sure, you can have all that neat stuff...either by grinding yourself retarded, or a few small payments of $10-20.  Or Day One DLC that seems to be features that the game cut to make deadline, but installed later to motivate you to buy the Super Uber Collector's Edition, or spend more money to get the content that you should have gotten with the game. (cough Mass Effect 3 cough).
• Pen-and-paper RPGs being seriously into the whole "go through dungeons and find the 12'x12' room with the kobold guarding the treasure box" aspect.  Don't get me started on whatever version of Dungeons and Dragons is coming out, as it seems that the game is trying to play "we're a mumorpger that you can play in person with other people in the same room!" games with us.  Pathfinder is playing "we're D&D 3.5.1" games...and the games I'm enjoying the most?  The Warhammer 40K RPGs coming out of Fantasy Flight Games, especially Rogue Trader (but not Black Crusade, as I'm not their target market-i.e. 18-21, angsty, and goth, or all the Elric books written by Michael Moorcock in his youth).  Hero Games is having a serious slow-down in their publication speed (but, I must say that Hero 6th doesn't do anything really that FRED didn't already do pretty well...and I'm a Hero Games fanboy).  Cthulutech and Eclipse Phase haven't had any releases in a long, long time-at least the creators of Cthulutech admit they were having publisher issues.  Steve Jackson Games seems to have gone over to a mostly-PDF release format for GURPS. 
  
  The big thing for White Wolf Games is the re-release of the Original World Of Darkness books.  Mind you, I want to see and play with Shards of the Exalted Dream...but only if they have nifty starship combat rules.  Otherwise, I can do without.

If you're a gamer that doesn't like games where you like brown muddy battlefields (Battlefield 2/Call of Duty whatever), or aren't jazzed by pattern matching games, or other games of this ilk, you're stuck.  I'm tired of a lot of the first person shooters out there, because they don't do anything new.  Or interesting.  Or fun.  And, there are no serious RTS games coming out, except an endless stream of add-on packs for Starcraft II.  Most of the games seem to be mumorpgers waiting to find a new audience to break off small chunks of the monolith that is World of Warcraft.  And, nobody has been able to convince me that these games are not just really fancy games of Whack-A-Mole.  And, even the esoteric pen-and-paper RPGs are having a nostalgia kick as they want you to find and fight more monsters in a maze of twisty patches that are all alike.

Maybe it's just me and my tastes are getting old (I think a few of my friends would say "refined").  But, I know I want to see Tenra Bansho Zero come out-not only because I've been waiting for it for the last few years, but it sounds like the game is in a lot of ways right.   I'm glad with the existence of Kickstarter, which has brought me games like Witch Girls (which has optional wizard rules, I can so see a Harry Potter-esque game here...), Hellas (sci-fi Greek tragedy/drama adventure gaming-who wouldn't love that?), and Torchships (something I haven't seen in a while, 3D starship combat without the laws of physics being broken, spindled, and mutilated...).  Without Kickstarter, these games may never see the light of day, for which I am very glad.  And, if they come out, there may be more that follow on the path they blaze.

Oh, and I want them to be successful-if only to wash the taste of compromise, brown muddy battlefields, and kobolds guarding treasure chests out of my mouth.