Breadth in games combatting triple-A "content-churning"

In my latest Huffington Post UK piece, I posit that conservativeness at the top-spend end of video gaming has, thankfully, been off-set by increases in internet speeds and the rise of "bite-size" gaming formats such as mobile and PC.

When I sat down to write the article last week, I couldn't quite believe it when I turned up the facts for this paragraph:

"The bestselling games this Christmas are so entrenched in sequelisation as to border on ridiculousness. We have the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the 14th Elder Scrolls release since 1994; we have Battlefield 3, the 19th Battlefield product published since 2002; and, most obviously, we have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the Vaz-baiting, industry-crushing super-game built on seven previous releases in the Call of Duty franchise since 2003."

Shocking. But not devastating. We aren't facing a true crisis in gaming creativity as we've managed to skirt the traditional publisher model thanks to increases in 'net speeds and the rise of digital distribution, and we've seen expansion away from reliance on the traditional, £40 game through the arrival of mobile gaming and the PC as an open platform.

So stop whining about shooting yet another man in the face: there's so much variety out there it's bewildering. Have a read.