The gaming industry has had its ups and its downs over the years and since the XBOX 360 and the Playstation 3 were released onto the market, it seems that everyone has jumped onto the bad wagon and started developing games for the industry. But is this really a good thing?

There are some cracking games out there at the moment (Bioshock series, Assassins Creed series etc) and these games sell well and are worth every penny that you spend to get them. But there are also some absolutely appalling ones available on the market and for some reason they seem to fly off the shelves. But why?

Let’s first take a look at the story of Sniper: Ghost Recon. This is a dreadful game with cagey graphics and even worse gameplay and it is just far too realistic for my liking. Whenever I pick up a game I like to think that I can have fun on it and that it won’t be so realistic that it will kill the game. This game however is realistic, you can’t just play it and slob about in front of the TV, you have to actually have a high degree of concentration and also you have to understand the basics of shooting a target from a distance. Now unless you have seen the film Shooter or have actually had some aspect of military training, there is no way on earth your going to be able to do it right first time.

So as a result, it makes the game harder and more intense, which may appeal to some people but to me, I just find it pointless. I struggled so much on the easiest difficulty setting that I eventually gave up after the second mission.

So when Sniper 2 was released earlier this month, I couldn’t believe it. I have seen it being played and realised that it was just more of the same. It was just as hard, just as cagey and even worse it seemed to me the missions didn’t make any sense. So why would they make a sequel and why would it sell?

The answer seems to lie in the amazing sniper war game called Sniper Elite. That was a huge success and it sold extremely well in the stores (so much so it is still £30+ pre-owned) and it had a great story line and fantastic missions. So they decided to test the water and give it a go, but to make it sell, they decided to bang the same engine that the Crisis series seems to use. This could be either a bad thing or a good thing, depending on whether you’re a crisis fan.

The second case study to look at is the game Operation Flashpoint. I never actually picked up this game and played it as I didn’t see the point. I watched a friend play it when it first came out and I thought it was dreadful. It was far too realistic; the maps were so huge you can get lost (it took him 8 hours to find his way to a mission point on the first level) and the graphics were appalling. This game was a complete let down and it looked to have so much promise when the teaser trailers were released online.

But still this game sold and it sold well and spawned a sequel and so much DLC that you wouldn’t even be able to save the game when you’re playing it.

There are many reasons why this game may have sold and sold well, but maybe the main reason is because at the time Call of Duty was maybe the game everyone was talking about and they decided to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ as it where.

But you can’t take any credit away from the marketing teams that these companies employ. They are extremely good at their jobs and they can make even the worse game seem like it’s the best thing on the market. This is possibly the main reason why the games sell because the marketers will take the best bits of any game and make it look like it’s a cracking game, when in fact its not.   

Also the fan base factor must be considered as well into why any game sells. Some gamers are totally loyal to a certain producer or series of games and even if the game is a dreadful one, they will still buy it either because they want the story or they just want to remain faithful.

So as long as these trends continue, bad games are going to be made and they are still going to sell. But as always, what constitutes to be a bad game is a matter of opinion for the gamer, and not for the wider audience.