XCom still no1 - Where have all the independent gaming companies gone?

It all started with a humble Commodore 64 way back in the early 80’s. As technology continued to move on at a breakneck pace, the humble 64 soon found itself obsolete against the power of the mighty Amiga A600. From that point onward the transmography of consoles snowballed, from an Amiga to a Master System, from that to a SNES, onwards to a Mega Drive and so on and so forth...

Computers today are a far cry from what they were back in the 80’s. Nowadays most modern household calculators contain more processing power than the entire Apollo spacecraft and Houston mission control put together; an altogether phenomenal fact considering that we put men on the moon using such technology. The race for bigger and better machines, faster processing and improved visual effects soon led to a revolution within the computing industry, culminating in the creation of a market dedicated to gaming. According to statistics and the PC Gaming Alliance, the US PC games market alone is worth an estimated $11bn a year.

The demand for games, believe it or not, has had an incredibly powerful and positive effect on the whole computing industry. Developers and designers constantly attempt to break barriers, forcing technology to move forward by pushing standard hardware to the limits. Yet, despite all these leaps and bounds in tech and gaming, a large part of the community still looks back and hankers for the simpler times where games were quirky, nigh-on impossible to complete and ultimately created independently.

But today is the decade of the genre, the franchise, where sequels after sequels of blockbuster titles are released in order to secure profits. Expectations and development costs of games are now so high, companies fear to take the risk on smaller, less well known titles. The independent companies are no more; instead corporations make the call on creation depending upon what the bottom line is.

It’s funny thou after so many years and so much development, that an old skool retro game such as X-com:UFO defense can still be voted no1 in the top 25 games of all time. It just goes to show that glitzy graphics are no match for playability and ultimately, nostalgia.