Music vs Singing Competitions

It's funny how things can come back up after a long time has passed. I haven't thought about this particular issue in a long time, and largely thought it well past its due date. But in nosing around the interweb, it seems to have made it's way around again. At least in certain circles.

Anyhoo, the original brouhaha all came about - a ways back now - when Sheryl Crow (a singer) made a comment about singing competition shows not being about music. And as you may well imagine, the fur flew all around the internet, with everyone saying (to sum in all up in a much politer way than the internet is known for): she just doesn't get it.

But of course, she did get it. And far better than everyone else at the time. Though, admittedly, she may not have articulated her position particularly well

 I will now supply that missing articulation.

So, almost all singing competition shows are, indeed, not about the music (I would say all singing competition shows are not about music, but I'm sure someone would pull up some obscure foreign show that actually is), and there are a lot of reasons as to why. But seeing as I don't want to type forever, I will mention only the top 5. (And at this time, I will take a  moment to make an extra-special note that none of this relates to the quality of one program or another - it is merely a demonstration of the lack of focus on music that these shows share in common.)

So, without further ado, the top 5 reasons:

1) And the winner is... Rain or shine, come hell or high water, there is always one winner and one winner only. Let's take two arbitrary seasons - call them season A and season B. Season A is a crop of all excellent singers, and the end of the competition will see one of them raised to the winner's circle. Season B has a crop of all middling singers, and the end of the competition will see one of them raised to the winner's circle. Comparing these two seasons, if the winner of season B had competed in season A, he would have come in dead last. And if any of the people in season A had competed in season B, he would easily have swept the competition. But despite this particular imbalance in quality levels from one season to the next, there is one winner from season A and one from season B, no matter what. And what's more, the winner of season A and the winner of season B are set on equal footing, since both of them won the same competition - technically. Musically, this is a poor choice. For the public, this is a poor choice. For the music and for the public interest, it would be best if everyone from season A won the competition, and no one from season B did. But for the sake of entertainment, it is far better if one person wins each season, and only one person. That's entertainment.

2) I can't stop, can't stop to read the music. Singing competition shows have been accused of being karaoke competitions. That's not quite true; they're a bit more than that. However, like karaoke, they don't test if a person can read music. They don't test if a person can write songs. And they don't even test whether a person has a good feel for choosing a new hit song. The shows technically could test whether a person has a good feel for which existing song it would be good for them to sing on camera, but in practice, the contestants can easily get a lot of advice about that. So, the only thing that the singing competitions test is the ability to sing existing songs to canned music.

3) Love me some power ballads. In a singing competition, the contestants are being voted on by the public, and you've got all of three minutes to leave a lasting enough impression on them to get them to vote for you. The public at large are not necessarily well-versed in the technicalities of music, and the audience won't necessarily have a wide experience in music of different genres or eras. Put all that together, and that spells love songs and power ballads. Popular, crowd-pleasing songs that allow you do leave an instant impression. Thus, singing competition shows don't examine the range of expression that a particular person might be able to achieve, nor does it examine their ability to draw out subtler emotions or deeper expressions of unpopular emotions. Singing competitions are all about being endearing and powerful. Crowd-pleasing, in other words.

4) Ready for my close up. Singing competition shows are TV. And they are TV that zooms in close with the camera. That means, the people must be close-up ready. They don't have to be pretty, but they can't be "ugly". The beginning parts of the competition automatically outcast anyone ugly. Sometimes quite rudely so. And then, not only must they not be ugly, they must - absolutely must - be charismatic. It doesn't matter how well a person sings - if they are an inanimate rock during a close-up, or if they give off a dull vibe of some kind, they will leave a bad impression. And since they are being voted upon, leaving a bad impression is as good as asking for a downvote. So, how you look and how charismatic you are before the camera are of highest importance. And then, below that in importance, comes how well you can sing.

5) Band on the stage. Singers often sing with a band. And since a band is made of people, a song can end up being played quite differently from one concert to another. Only natural; people aren't machines. A singer thus may need to adapt through the coarse of a concert to the fluctuations in the music from the other band members. But singing competitions get nowhere close to this aspect of music. Singing competitions are performed with canned instruments that always play their songs in the same way, every time. Thus, singing competitions don't test if the singer has a good feel for music. A person can easily memorize the tempo of a canned song and sing it the same way without ever feeling the music behind it. Take them away from the canning, however, and they immediately lose their rhythm. Which is rote memorization, not the feel of music.

If it was about the music, the competition would be a blind one. No knowledge of the contestants' pasts (that's the #6 reason, by the way), no seeing the contestants, no pre-judging. Just the songs. Plus, extra points if they had to sing unique, untested music.

So, now, put it all together. That's a charismatic individual ready for their close-up who knows how to please the crowd and who is singing to canned recordings of popular songs. Okay, that's not about the music.Ipso facto. Instead, they are about showmanship. Entertainment.

Singing competitions may not prove that someone is ready for a band, as the gifted recording deals for the winner seem to imply, but they do prove that someone is ready for Vegas!

Well, if it weren't for that 1 winner, season A/season B issue. But, it's close enough.

Boom and Bust Cycle

In case you hadn't heard, this isn't the first time financiers have crashed an economy. It isn't even the tenth. Or the hundredth. From the Japanese crisis to the Argentine crisis to the S&L scandal to the City crisis to the Great Depression to the Long Depression, they've had a hand in causing them all – meaning, today's crisis, despite what some people keep saying, isn't an abnormal state of affairs. No, this is what finance do.

Previous to the Great Depression, banks failed all of the time. And when they failed, depositors lost everything. There were no guarantees.

"Bankster" is not at all a new word. It required a bit of dusting off before it was recently brought back into vogue, but it's been around for a very long time.

And not just because of people losing all of their deposited savings. There were the usurious loans, the calling in of debts in moments of bank crisis, predatory loans the confiscation of property through repossession, and many, many false promises.

On top of that, the economy would crash regularly - in part because of the financiers. It would crash so regularly, in fact, that it was given a term – the Boom & Bust Cycle. Because when it was booming (blowing up the balloon) it boomed big, and when it busted it busted to nothing.

And that's how things were.

But, the Long Depression followed so soon after by the Great Depression changed everything. Regulations were put into place denying banks and finance houses the ability to implement the more "creative" investment vehicles which had precipitated so many crises. Bank accounts were insured, so that depositors no longer stood to lose everything. And banks were organized around a federal institution, standing ready to bail them out when they messed up, ready to do so so that another "banking crisis" did not arise and once again threaten the economy.

And added to that was a mentality of "safety and security" that pervaded the time. So, for a generation there was stability.

But stability bred complacency. The financiers convinced enough people that they were better now, wiser, with enough internal safeguards that they would no longer repeat the crises of the past.

That notion mixed easily and headily with the neo-liberal belief that the financiers understood finance far better than any government could, and therefore the financiers should be allowed to run their businesses as they - being the most fittest - thought best. Essentially declaring that the financiers needed a free hand so that they could make everyone a lot more money.

So, after thirty years of safety, the government began stripping away the regulations, and the financiers immediately started exploding bubble economies again, with the inevitably resultant bank failures and government bailouts. The first of these to be seriously noticed (but by far not the first) being the S&L Crisis.

Why?

Because it's what they do.

All of the various new investment vehicles aren't actually "new." They're old, warmed over rehashes from the pre-Depression days brought to the modern era. All the old financier favorites, everything they wanted brought back from the "good old days."

And with them came the Boom and Bust Cycle.

It was inevitable. After all, if you set out to return to a Victorian-style economic regulatory system, then you get a Victorian-style economy.

Right now, we're in the Bust, and it's sad and trying and entirely predictable.

The Governments of the World

So, it has been brought to my attention that a lot of people don't really know what the different kinds of government represent.

The thing about governmental bodies is they're actually rather similar. Communism, Republics, Monarchies, and all the rest: Despite all the rhetoric about vast gulfs of understanding (not to mention all of the wars fought over those differences), governmental types themselves actually vary very little from one another.

Which is only logical, because, in the end, they all serve basically the same purpose: to provide for communal defense, to ensure order, and to gather certain resources to guard the community against emergencies.

Modern society would probably also add to that the providing of certain resources and infrastructure that are deemed necessary for modern life – ie roads, electricity, education, and the like.

And, well, since they all serve a similar purpose, it is only natural that they would share a similar structure.

Beyond all the philosophy and rhetoric and ceremony, there is – really – only one thing that distinguishes one government style from another in any meaningful way. And that is: who gets the vote.

In other words, who it is that gets to make the decisions about how that society lives, endures, and is governed.

So, here's a quick run-down of the various kinds of government, and their take on that one major difference:

Democracy: rule by the Commons

Republic: rule by an elected Elite who are chosen by the Commons

Monarchy: rule by an inherited Aristocracy

Oligarchy: rule by the wealthiest Merchant Families

Theocracy: rule by the most important Religious Figures

Fascism: rule by Militants (note: NOT the Military, more like vigilantes)

Soviet Communism: rule by Bureaucrats

Socialism: rule by the Worker

Dictatorship: rule by One Man

Confederation: a voluntary council of multiple Leaders

Technocracy: rule by Scientists         

Demarchy: rule by Lottery Winner

Anarchy: no rule

Now then, when you study the various governmental bodies, you will notice that a particular style of government will tend to produce a particular kind of law. And that is only natural, since a certain class of rulers will tend to produce a certain kind of law – an aristocracy isn't likely to begin divesting power onto the serfs, for instance.

But the kind of government actually has nothing inherently to do with the kind of laws which are implemented, nor the ones that are enforced, nor the kind of economy that gets implemented, nor the kind of court system that gets organized, nor – most of all – the kinds of social structures that people under that rule form with each other.

However, all of those things are related. A society with certain social structures will tend to form certain kinds of governments. Ie, a society based around the Rule of Law will trend towards Democracy, because the values of both systems mesh well together. But neither of those inherently develops the other. They just work well together, and because they work well together, they are often found together. However, they work well with other systems, too.

For instance – The Rule of Law works just as well with Technocracies. Perhaps even better.

On the other side of things, the Rule of Law doesn't work so well with Monarchy – a society where the law is defined on the moment by the aristocracy, meaning their word is law, not the law on the books – so Monarchy and the Rule of Law are not often seen together. Or at least not for long (not long in terms of history, anyways). But, they are not by any means mutually exclusive.

Society, you see, is a mess of several structures that are spun together to form the society that people live under. The government, then, is (for the most part) the system of rules through which the rulers rule. And that is why the different governmental styles, when looked at from a distance, seem so similar. Their differences are not in their structures, but instead is merely in their arrangement of that structure.

So why, then, the recent big dispute between Democracy and Soviet Communism? Why, when the difference is only between rule by a selected Elite (most of today's 'Democracies' actually being Republics, of course) and rule by Bureaucrats?

Well, the actual dispute wasn't between governmental styles, but between economic systems, because communism isn't just a governmental style, it's also a series of economic theories. And the dispute was between Capitalist theory and Soviet Communist theory. An economic system controlled by a corporate elite and a system controlled by bureaucrats (Soviet Communism being a system where all power was concentrated in the hands of the bureaucrats).

And, if you really want to get down to it, the dispute wasn't really about that either. Capitalism was never against anything called Communism, as its long-running deals with China show.

The dispute was over who was going to control the world's resources in the post World War II world, what with Europe in retreat from its imperial holdings – the Old World interests, their New Money offspring, or these jumped-up bureaucrats. Worse, these bureaucrats kept mouthing off about worker-rule. Even if they never forged a system with any real intent of making that happen, that kind of talk was rather a thorn in the side of the Capitalist system.

Then there's the recent dispute over Fascism, and the whole question of whether it is a Right or a Left institution?

Fascism's philosophies were actually taken from both Right and Left. Fascism is more complex than a simple Right/Left system can represent. If you absolutely must put it on such a binary graph, it leans slightly more to the right than the left – with its love of militarism, tradition, and order. But it isn't really a rightwards organization.

To really plot Fascism, you have to step beyond the single-dimensional Right/Left, Liberty/Order simplicity. Simplicity may be easy to understand, but it is often lacking in accuracy.

If you were to draw a vertical line onto the horizontal Liberty/Order line, and attach the term Progressive to the top, and Populist on the bottom, then you will be able to get much more meaning from plotting Fascism onto a grid.

Fascism doesn't really care about Liberty or Order, so it plots flat on the right/left line, but trending rightwards. Instead, what Fascism is most concerned with is Elitism. Elitism of person, and of idea, and of race. So it plots to the top of the up/down Progressive/Populist line.

And if you want to get really accurate, you'll add the Z-axis into the mix, and attach Individualist and Community to that Z-line. Picturing such a 3-dimensional system isn't so easy for everyone though. But if you do add the Z, then you can plot Fascism well into the community side, since Fascism is all about sacrifice and giving over your identity to the state (and usually eventually the Empire). Thus making Fascism an upwards and backwards movements, but not a rightwards or leftwards. (Though trending rightwards towards conservatism and Order).

On top of all this, there are a few other terms thrown around about governmental styles. But these are usually just flavors of the terms above – a specification of type rather than category. Tyranny is a type of Dictatorship (or occasionally of Oligarchy or Monarchy) where the absolute rule of the dictator is unwanted and cruel – ie, Saudi Arabia. Benevolency is a type of Dictatorship that treats its people well, and is thus often well-liked by its people.

Social Democracy is a type of Republic that strives for a society without extremes of wealth, power, or privilege. Fundamentalist is a type of Theocracy ruled by the extreme Traditionalists. The Garrison State is a theoretical rule by a military that isn't also an aristocracy or a dictatorship (theoretical because it's never been attempted).

Etc. Etc.

And those are the government styles under which we all live.

Some points that might be worth pondering: Democracy hasn't really been tried since the time of the Ancient Greeks. A Federation is the same as a Confederation, except membership isn't voluntary. Marxism has never really been tried – outside of the occasional commune. Oligarchy has been tried many times, but rarely successfully. Empire and Dictatorship go incredibly well together. Yes, Demarchy really exists, and has been attempted (no politicians!), but success is even more minimal than Oligarchy. Parliamentary systems allow each group a portion of the seats on the governmental body equal to the percentage of the vote the capture, instead of Winner-Takes-All, which allows for rapid changeovers of the government even under a Republic. The US is Federation, not a Confederation.

Suddenly, America Can't Win Its Wars?

War

I find it curious that so many in the media are shocked – shocked – to discover that the United States can't win two little wars against Third World countries. Shocked to the core.

I mean – why? Why so shocked? Really?

And their only explanation for this tragic state of affairs is that it must mean that "America is in Decline!" To these members of the media, it is just one more bit of evidence in the accumulating case against America.

But, really, since when has the US won its wars?

Why, even still now within living memory, there was Vietnam, and Korea, and that failed quo in Cuba, and Cambodia, and Kosovo. But we can back even before that, because America's war record has always been poor, all the way back to the ill-fated invasion of Canada in 1812.

Which isn't to say there haven't been some wins. The conquering of the Phillippines, for one. The Kuwait War for another. World War II: Pacific Theatre for a third. But, overall, there has always been more losses than wins, even against Third World countries.

What I find even more interesting, though, is back in the previous century, when the US lost in both Korea and Vietnam, the common consensus was that people were proud that the US had lost – they wanted the troops OUT of those countries. The failure of those wars was seen as a victory, not as a sudden loss of power.

Korea and Vietnam also were both wars filled with military error and hubris-inspired disasters. Most major battles were won, but they were often ugly wins. Near to being Pyrrhic victories. Stragically, poor decisions were often implemented (whether at political behest or not), such as the invasion of China during the Korean War. All in all, they were filled with military blunders.

These two new wars – although they are filled with a great deal of sleaze and savagery on America's part, same as those previous wars – were militarily very well-executed. So, how it, then, that America's army is somehow in decline? It's fighting much better than it did even 30 years ago.

Equipment handed out to a lot of regular soldiers was of low or non-existent quality, sure. But that was a choice made to put most of the available military funds into Special Forces and research. And just take a quick glance at the amount spent on mercenaries. If the Pentagon chose to spend that on regular troops, they could all be outfitted in tip-top gear. Or, for that matter, cancel a single stealth bomber, and use that to outfit the troops.

Priorities, you see, are other.

But that's actually beside the point. The military fought well in these latest wars. And won the fighting. So, how is that a decline of the military?

It isn't.

Instead, it's the politics of the situation that the US is losing. The politicians and diplomats haven't been able to capitalize on the military's victories. Which is a pretty regular result when you send the military in to do a quick but dirty job, and then have no plan for what to do with the politics of what the military has just given you. Which America didn't.

Then there's the whole question of not having enough troops. Again, though, that is a choice. The military stated – from the very beginning – that it didn't have enough troops for what the politicians were asking. And the politicians fired anyone who said it.

So, we don't currently have enough troops to go around, but, again, that is a political choice. The politicians could have put out a call for soldiers – people were ready to volunteer in droves. When they didn't ask, and the volunteer impetus faded, the politicians could have instituted a draft. But politically, they didn't want to do that either.

So, we have plenty of money and not enough troops. So, we have the mercenaries. It was pretty much inevitable, once those earlier political choices were made.

And finally, the question of how is it that America – with its hugely expensive army – can't beat up on a couple of Third World countries, and put an end to all this resistance and uprising? Surely, that must be a sign of decline, right?

But once again, the military did win. After that, you either have to – as the military recommended – (a) go in with heavy forces and secure the area, or (b) you have to use terror in order to control a larger group with a much smaller force (ie, the manner in which Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq amidst hostile and much larger tribes than his own).

But, once again, politics interfered. The politicians decided it would be best to do neither, to instead simply cross their fingers and trust that God would make it all turn out right, since He was on America's side.

So, instead, the US ended up with this half-assed in between system going seemingly nowhere. And thus you end up with Abu Graib. Abu Graib and all of the other Inquisition chambers like it.

The US military hasn't shown any signs of decline, and thus its military cannot be taken as one of the signs of America's decline.

So, then, where is the source of all this unrest coming from, if it's not because of the endless wars?

It comes from a general malaise, mostly originating from the Middle Class. A lot of bubbles have been burst. The bubble of the shining light on the hill – the country that everyone adored. The bubble of America's omnipotence (the US military is good, but not omnipotent). The belief in America's divine business and monetary sense. The tech bubble. The various loan bubbles. The looming insurance bubbles.

None of these were ever true. They were beliefs. Bubbly beliefs.

And when a bubble bursts, when an illusion gets torn down, a feeling of malaise often settles in on the people who held the illusion.

And a lot of bubbles burst all at once in America, spreading a great deal of malaise around.

           

LEADERS

In the near future, humanity has developed a slightly more rigid caste system than it has today.

A boy from the top caste is about to graduate from elementary school, but he makes a terrible mistake on the ball field, and the other children ridicule him for it. It prideful fashion, the boy plans an over-elaborate revenge for these slights. However this boy has, in current terminology – the guts to make this vision a reality. That is, if he can find the right kids to make his plan work, and they can all avoid getting caught….

Read "Leaders" in Infinite Horizons for FREE at RPGNow.

An Analysis of the Current Trends in SF

Science Fiction: the stories of speculation. 
 
Terms tend to change over time, particularly in a genre so undefined as is Science Fiction. So, to make sure we are on the same page, we'll go through a quick definition check. Back when I was studying, Science Fiction was divided into three large categories of kinds of stories – Futurism, Science Fantasy, and Space Opera. (Not so long before that, Fantasy was still considered a category of Science Fiction, actually. But that's an interesting fact that's really beside the point.) 

Those three are fairly broad categories that aren't used all that much outside of literary discussions, so most people outside of literary circles won't have heard of them, particularly since at least one of those categories is now dead. But, what did they mean? The idea of Futurism is (or possibly was) the concept of taking a few issues from the modern day, projecting those issues a little into the future, and imagining what the future would be like if we continue down the path that those issues represent, or at least what they represent to the author. More often than not, these were 'Warning Tales' – an alarm cry for a fearful future. Prime exemplar of them: George Orwell's 1984. 

But, Futurism has been dead for so long now that an entire generation has grown up in a post-Futurism world. Which is an issue we'll come back to...

 

Read the full article in Infinite Horizons for FREE at RPGNow.

Is American Culture Getting Dumber?

Even when the above question is asked, it's often taken as a given that the answer is: "yes," and then the speaker argues not 'if' but 'why.'

On the other hand, "yes" is demonstrably true. Movies, newspapers, magazines, books, television shows – all their material are shorter, louder, simpler, cruder, and, most of all, plainer. From the news using the term "bad guys" instead of "perpetrators," to the removal of the ability to have a character lie sometimes but not others, to the enforced reduction of rather multi-faceted issues to simple dualities of us vs them. And that's just SOME of the stuff you can find in the new production manuals (yes, the manuals exist, I own one) that everyone now has to follow.

However, those new rules are a conscious result of choices made by the money behind the content, and so it is not at all reflective of the broader culture outside of entertainment – a culture which, though it is certainly affected by entertainment, is still largely the same as it has always been.

But back to entertainment. The content that is available now is assembled to a 5^th-grade education, most of it. That's no secret – it's the main pitch of the suits behind the content. There are entire books you can read about the philosophy behind that, with 5^th grade being their stated desired content level.

Yet, I would argue that this dumbing down is a side-effect of the choices that have been made, instead of, as I usually hear assumed, a purposeful intent on the parts of the suits.

Having watched a lot of old movies in my time, I can honestly tell you that a lot of dumb movies were produced from the beginnings of the industry right up to today. I mean, really, really dumb.

The difference from then unto today is variety, or rather the lack thereof now. In the past, entertainment was pitched in many different genres to many different groups of people. But now, today, that once great diversity has been reduced to only a handful of genres that are pitched to everybody.

Racing, westerns, noir, screwball comedies, invention, adventure, farce, satire, intrigue – that's just some of the movie genres that have been ended in recent years. Just some. 

Which has left the industry producing very few genres.

To illustrate with something that is even more stunningly visible, and that doesn't involve going over a hundred years of entertainment - let's take a look at video games. In an industry only thirty years old, the ending of genres is markedly visible. Here is a list of the genres that were once produced:

SIMULATIONS

Military Vehicle (Plane, Tank, Submarine)

Military Fleet

Flight

Space-Jet

Life-Sim

Business

Sport

BOARD GAME-STYLE

Grand Strategy

Empire Builder

4X

Turn-Based Tactical

Turn-Based RPG

Classic Board Games

ACTION

Platformer

Clickies (sometimes called Action RPG)

Real-time Strategy

Real-Time Tactical

Light Gun

Rail Shooter

1x1 Fighting

Beat-M-Up

3^rd Person Shooter

COMBAT SIM

Tactical Shooter

Historical Shooter

Sci-Fi Run-n-Gun

PUZZLES

Puzzler

Who-Done-It

(the terribly named) Adventure

Physics-Based

Interactive Fiction

Environmental

PARTY

Rhythm

Trivia

Social

Today, what do you have?

SIMULATIONS

Life-Sim

Business

Sport

BOARD GAME-STYLE

4X (rare)

Classic Board Games

ACTION

Clickies (rare)

Real-time Strategy (rare)

1x1 Fighting (rare)

3^rd Person Shooter

COMBAT SIM

Sci-Fi Run-n-Gun (what about Call of Duty, et all? – hah, if you regenerate health and/or have infinite ammo in even one gun, that's Sci-Fi no matter what the setting pretends to be)

PUZZLES

Physics-Based (rare)

PARTY

Rhythm

And added to those, one single new genre:

NETWORKING

MMORPG

So, instead of a dumbing down of the games that are available, what has happened is that most of the "smart" genres have been stripped from development, leaving only the dumb styles of games. You can see it quite clearly in the lists above.

This has been a larger trend across all fields of entertainment. The variety has been greatly reduced, and only the most popular genres are developed for now, with anything "intelligent" long since cut out, along with many other genres. Not suddenly, but one by one, the other genres lost their backing.

It's not a secret, either. It was a conscious, often-told business decision. The proponents of this theory have the idea that it is easier and more cost-effective to do what is most popular, and then include elements that those who like the less popular genres like in order to bring them into liking the more popular style. ie, producing an Action movie with Noir-ish elements in order to attempt to make a movie for action fans that also appeals to Noir fans.

And it was quite a successful theory, too. At first. When only a few companies were doing it.

But in the way of modern business, every businessperson reads the exact same book, and now every single company is following the exact same theory. So, now every games company is making First Person Shooters, because there's big money in selling that genre. Which, when you look at that from a broader perspective, means that every single games company is chasing the money of the FPS fan crowd, but no one's chasing the money of the Grand Strategy crowd.

And THAT has the broader effect of reducing the amount of money available to the indistry, since they have effectively excluded the money of sections of the populace by excluding their genres from development, while at the same time putting every company in competition for the exact same dollars of the FPS fans. The exact same dollars, because FPS fans don't have a limitless supply of money or time, so they're just not going to be able to consume all of the FPS games currently being produced for them. Which means the money from the FPS fans will be dispersed over many games, instead of a few, reducing the profitability of all FPS games, while also guaranteeing that a large number of them will fail.

And thus, too, you have sequel-it-is – a way of trying to bring back the guarantee of big money returns.

Yes, the potential returns on an FPS are larger. But that's POTENTIAL. If you eliminate a number of customers by stopping production of games for them (and you'll only get a small portion of them back with simple gimmicks from their favored genres added to the popular genres), you reduce the overall money entering into the field, and with a smaller pool of money to draw from, the industry has to shrink.

The suits somehow seem to have forgotten the old capitalist idea of trying to milk every dollar you can from every member of the populace you can find, and replaced it with the idea that you should milk only the popular and the easy.

How very High School.

P.S. If I were truly cynical, I might wonder why the only two main genres of games left are Combats Sims and Domestic Sims – as if they were trying to forcibly groom men for life as a soldier and women for life in the home. Hm.