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Life After the Video Game Crash
codecasting writes "There's an interesting, very satirical story over at David Wong's Pointless Waste of Time where he makes a good case for the upcoming death of the video game industry. His key points include gaming platforms largely reaching a technological plateau, the aging of the 'Original Gamers' audience, and the slew of games that are just copies of the same game from last year, but with a new title and different cars/guns/bikinis/etc. An interesting and humorous read."
I tend to agree. A good game has much more to it than highly realistic 3d videos. Historically the games which have been most successful were the ones with a simple, yet addictive concept. It didn't matter that they were designed for a 8 bit 2MHz proccessor with a black and white low-res display.
Recently there has been almost no inovation whatsoever. Every new game which comes out belongs to an already existing category (strategy, 3d fps, simulation, etc), with the only difference between them being slightly modified sprites.
The way I see it, the future probably will lie in Massive-multiplayer. As residential connections get faster, and protocols are improved to cope with lag better, it might be possible to design games where hundreds of thousands of players compete in real time in one virtual environment. That would be awesome.
The lack of innovation has come from the fact that video games have become a big business in the past 20 years. You can make the same argument that movies are the same way. Video games will continue to grow as the first "Video game generation" gets older. Think about it, most players now are 30-35 or younger...What will the market be like when these people are 80, and everyone plays games?
The Market is growing, not shrinking. Games are becoming more mainstream, which leads companies to produce "safer" tried and true games. Don't worry, there will still be innovation but there will also be more and more "safe" games as video games grow as a real business.
The author makes some really dead-on points, and it's plenty enough to make investors in Nintendo shares shake in their boots.
But I think he's badly underestimating the creativity of the companies that do survive -- whoever they happen to be.
Take board games as an example. How many ways can you move a playing piece from point A to point B? Isn't Life just the same as Monopoly, which is no different from Trivial Pursuit, which is an obvious ripoff of Chutes and Ladders?
You get the idea. Those four games hugely different variations on the same "platform" -- a flat piece of cardboard. What's more, they're still around after decades. Monopoly keeps coming out with special editions that are no more than "different cars" in GTA-LXXVI -- but they still sell.
And a stroll down Toys-R-Profit's game aisle shows a dizzying variety of board games. Many of them are lame variations on the theme (roll 1d6 to see if Barbie gets a good parking space at the mall) and won't last a year. But while they're around, someone will buy them, and next year we'll have another lame variant.
What's sad is that we're seeing the end of the beginning. We 30-somethings watched video games go from homebuilt to primitive to amazing... to commodity. I expect the children of the 1860s experienced the same thing with board games.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
His key points include gaming platforms largely reaching a technological plateau, the aging of the 'Original Gamers' audience, and the slew of games that are just copies of the same game from last year, but with a new title and different cars/guns/bikinis/etc.
The only difference could be that most people 30 and younger have grown up around video games, so they are more likely to continue playing/buying games. Other than that, the game scene sounds remarkably similar to the time just before the crash. Rehashes, remakes, same old, same old...
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
Remember the first video game to gross $1 billion? NBA Jam, before it even made it into the home. This was after one of the prior 'crashes' in the home market. We all got burned out on Atari 2600/C64/Apple][ games and headed back to the arcade.
The video game industry may or may not be putting the player into the 'movie', but does it have to? My most feverish moments of gaming usually involved a text CLI interface. Some used a joy stick. The game is what you make it, IMHO.
The game industry will grow. It's just waiting for the next big thing, which may actually be some old thing redone to be fresh or just captures the imagination of players. The failings of the game industry isn't so much the tired old games redone, it's simply the lull between the peaks. There will be another peak, and another and another... as he said, Something truly new and different and novel, dammit. The market is ripe for it.
It always will be. In the meantime, I continue to play treasures from the past.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I skimmed over the article. I have to disagree completely with his conclusion. Technology has not stagnated. People are still having original gameplay ideas. Sure, there are genres that are over done or frequently done, but that's fine. The games are becoming much higher production value. Look at the credits for a game like Vice City, it's simply amazing. In my opinion, games are becoming better than ever and I expect the game industry to keep growing for the near future.
Please, Not another BSD is dying troll... err oh.. n/m.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
I'll IMHO take a lot to revive that, and as pointed out a couple of weeks ago, it'll take a development team run by people who love what they do, and not executives who love reading P&E statements based on the projected income of the "hottest new release!".
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's inevitable that things should slow down after the river runs dry on the 'easy' new gameplay concepts. But it's not like the industry is completely based around being new and cutting edge. Most of the best games still stand the test of time, not for their graphics, like youd want to think, but for the creativity and balance of the product. I wont cry when this happens, I hate the cookie-cutter game builds right now. THEY will go, but the good game producers will still survive, and maybe prosper.
Less garbage on the rack as far as im concerned.
Really now, if the same old idea just rehashed over and over (but most likely with slight variations) were a problem in the entertainment creation market, then books/music/art would have stopped being made sometime around, oh, 1000 years ago.
Everything worth expressing has already been expressed. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy the new incarnations. Society changes, things move out of favor, then back in again. At which point old ideas get rehashed and become popular once again. I don't think the gaming industry is in any danger of flopping, in fact I'll bet its only going to become a more and more pervasive part of world culture.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
One day you have an article about how television is dying because of video games; now apparently video games are dying. Are they going to be replaced by people sitting around talking to each other? I don't buy it.
Personally, though, I think that console games will probably take over from PC games. It must be a lot easier for developers to not have to try making everything compatible with all of the various pc hardware components.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
No kidding. I get the distinct impression, after reading this article, that the author likes to hear himself talk. I understand the points he raises, and even agree with a couple of them (online gaming is a niche market with respects to consoles), but I think the conclusions are way out in left field.
The XBOX and the Gamecube were failures? The graphical upgrades between consoles is getting narrower to the casual observer, so the game industry is going to take a nose dive? Instead of, say, the more reasonable outcome: they change to fit the new environment? We're not talking about the slow-to-move Recording Industry here, the videogame industry is in its infancy in comparison.
TFA looks more like an excuse to come up with some creative insults, and play with pictures in an attempt to be humorous. The arguments remind me of conversations I heard at lunch in junior high!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Ugh.
Come on. We've heard the "there's nothing new under the sun" "gamers are getting old" arguments before.
Hell, we've even heard the "limits of hardware" argument before.
Thousands of years of human history has shown that there's always something new under the sun, and human interests are constant.
Video games will go away when something else becomes more fun and not before.
I still think that some of the greatest games were produced by Infocom. Doesn't get much simpler technologically, but you could loose days in those worlds puzzling around. Since the Wolfenstein/DOOM days, so many games have shifted over to pure death and destruction with only video frame rates to separate one from the other. Even the better multiplayer games are either team destruction or just graphical MOOs. Technology can make a great game fascinating, but making an old idea pretty won't bring in the bucks.
Yeah, if it really did suck I wouldn't have to vacuum the carpet, just turn on the TV.
It might also be the case that video games have a fairly solid place in modern life that will endure even if we are on a technological plateau. Broadcast TV hasn't changed that much. Even though it's struggling it's still holding in there.
Where I live is a bit different. It's pretty much now summer and the weather will be excellent until December (for the most part) and few people will hang around inside. Too much surfing, cycling, hanging out, skateboarding, etc. to do (in short what many video games are themed on.) It's more enjoyable to do these in person.
When I lived in the midwest the winters could seem 6 months long. High time for TV and video games. (Hint to marketing: Push new stuff in September, not December!) I'll still play games, but for me there's nothing to match the adrenaline rush of being among 70-100 others on racing bikes tearing down country roads.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I must hang around with a different crowd. They're all screaming about this or that game that just came out - or is about to, mostly of the Online Multiplayer variety. And it really doesn't matter whether it's on the PC or a console. Multiplayer online games are currently "it".
From the article:
Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back ho-"
Turret laser bolts tear his X-Wing apart.
So true, how many times do you have to die a horrible death to finally get all the way through a game that was supposed to make you feel like a hero, but instead ensures that you never leave your cushy chair, your cold pizza, or your virginity.
I find that games only requiring a short period of time to throughly enjoy are my favorite. UT2004 is a blast in Onslaught mode (everyone should know this by now) and I can play with my brothers across the country. And a few good matches takes less than an hour of my life.
I like to play Simpsons Hit & Run with my wife when we want to just relax for an hour or so on a rainy day.
But I probably will not be willing to ever fork over the bucks that some of the upcoming all-in-one gaming/movie/theater systems are going to cost. I'll just get a cheapo PS2 and some decent games. I don't want gaming to be my life.
I'm on a chair.
The author says he did the 'research' but on what is what I want to know.
Take a look at my research. It says that the video game industry is growing at 11.7% compounding growth. Thats exponential.
So, he's just plain wrong.
Today even the smallest children doesn't seem to be so fascinated by computer games. They have seen it all before, and they are used to the high quality so they demand so much more.
I miss the Commodore 64...
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
On the other hand, my 8-year-old kid plays video games even more than I did.
The game industry is simply maturing, like any other 25 year old industry.
And his argument about the original game generation getting older? Man, that's just moronic, IMO. Someone may want to let this guy know that people are still having kids, these kids are still growing up, and --- guess what? playing video games. Not only that, but more are playing these days than ever before, especially as gaming is no longer seen as a lonely geek thing with all the associated stigma of that.
I do agree with certain aspects of his article, but we all have to remember that we were blessed to live through the birth stages of videogaming. Of *course* after that period of rapid change things are going to solidify and we're going to end up with less pure innovation -- this happens in every industry and even in every creative medium. But that doesn't mean new ideas and new technologies wont burst through every now and then to revitalize things... That's just the normal cycle of how these things work, get used to it....
Well, really, we are dying, and that's what makes it easier for guys like this goofball to publish a silly article. Obviously games aren't as good as they used to be, but really, it's just this guys wish to be a child again kicking...chalk it all up to nostalgia, and the fantastic phenomenon that is human aging.
The only difference is that video games are still too new to have properly settled themselves into a couple of classics, and the market isn't particularly interested in pushing forward unless profit can be found. Production values seem like a sort of trade-off to me; for a few million bucks you can make a game that looks fantastically real, but at the same time has become devoid of any unified personal touch by dint of being produced by a huge team rather than a small group or a single person. I really haven't seen any big-budget games within the last ten-odd years that have managed to overcome this problem; they all seem to get mired in this sort of muddled, disunited world-view, where you get things like campy dialogue spoken by uber-realistic, vicious-looking thugs and secret agents, while moody BGM plays. Certainly, some fare better than others, but the old perfection of the experience is pretty much gone in big titles now. I think that smaller ones will continue to be the place for real innovation for the immediate future.
1. The technological plateau he speaks of is merely a graphical one, and it only seems like a plateau because new game consoles don't come out every month.
There's also the consideration that there are many places for the technology to expand. GTA3, despite what one may think about its gamesplay, hints at what is possible. Maybe the graphics won't improve much, but the world will get bigger and more detailed. The fascination of GTA3 for me was the ability to just wander around, down alleyways that had nothing to do with the missions and find stairways to rooftops, trash bins- all sorts of real world details. Lots of the world reacted to your actions. That's a neat thing. When your video game is an entertaining toy outside of the core gameplay, you've really accomplished something.
There's more to games than polygon count. Most of the game worlds, even the likes of Halo, are still fairly primitive compared to what could be done with ever more processing power. The end of graphical improvement might be a GOOD thing, and force developers to focus on gameplay, computer character AI, and other things that are a bit lacking these days.
2. He didn't really seem to have an argument in this section. ??? His view of the types of enjoyment derived from video games is a bit limited.
3. His horizon is limited. The video games may (or may not) be reaching upwards of 90% penetration into the current market, but the *market* is exapanding. Technological civilization is creeping into parts of the world not yet elevated to such.
He also seems to oddly forget that new generations are being born, and *everything* is new and novel to them.
4. Are the Gamecube and X-Box really complete failures? They've all sold millions of units. They didn't sell as well because [A] the PS2 got there first and [B] not as many good games. The X-Box especially only had maybe two decent titles for a long time.
As for age, he's entitled to his opinion, but I play games in my late 30's. I know people in their 40's and 50's who regularly play PS2 games and PC games. To use his belabored Hollywood comparison, most people seem to realize that, just as there are movies for children and adults, there are also video games for children and adults.
5. He might be right here. I already have home theater stuff. I want a game console to play games. I don't need a jack of all trades, master of none. That's why I expect a minicrash when these All In One systems fail to sell.
6. Agreed on the online play. I know Final Fantasy *fanatics* who have zero desire in FF11 Online. The reaction is usually, "Wait, I bought a game and I have to keep paying every month?"
7. was just a rehash.
--- Ban humanity.
Will there be a rise of an "independent" games industry with more focus on artistry and less focus on profit in much the same way as there is an independent film industry? Will we ever have a widely-known gaming equivalent of the Sundance Film Festival?
Don't get me wrong -- I appreciate both blockbuster Hollywood movies and indie films in their own ways. I'd be interesting to see that kind of balance and contrast come to another entertainment industry.
I was all giddy and excited about HL2. I hadn't been that worked up about a game in 10 years. I was ready and willing to drop whatever it cost to run that game at a fantastic framerate, but it didn't show up, and now I'm even more jaded than I was before.
I had some mild excitement for the previously-upcoming Sam & Max sequel, but that got cancelled. (a new adventure game! MAN I miss that genre. Thank you, ScummVM.)
I think part of the lack of neverending salivation over upcoming games is that I can just go buy them now, unlike when I was 10 and a $50 game was a HUGE deal to save up for. That, or copying 25 pages of machine code out of the back of Compute's Gazette by hand.
Still, there are great games, and I play and buy them. Actually, I probably buy 3 or 4 times what I did when I was younger, even if I spend less time playing them. It's just easier now to justify picking up Viewtiful Joe while I'm grocery shopping than it was when my allowance was $1/week. I don't think the industry has anything to worry about. The dorks who played games as kids in 1982 all have jobs now, and will go right on buying them. Heck, the guys I know with kids play multiplayer gamecube games with them.
That entire article is onlt one man's opinion and not the absolute truth. Everyone is different hence you cannot predict what people want and/or will want in the future. Trust me many have tried on numerous topics and failed miserably.
Gaming has a long past and even brighter future regardless if gameplay isn't massively different in the future. A game is about passing time, escaping, a hobby, and plain ole fun.
There are millions of games out there for all types of preferences and all types of attention spans. There is something for everyone. Even though there seems to be a lack of original content in the last few years there has been an advancement in gameplay. More interactivity (HL2 environments), a move towards team based play and operating vehicles (CoD, BF 1942, UT2k4), and this is just in FPS's. MM's are also evolving into more of a FP view with much more depth not including SW Galaxies.
Things don't evolve overnight and some people just like to whine about the current state of affairs but I see it simply evolving at a slower pace because there's a lot more companies making games these days and orginality is harder to come by.
FYI- the author stated that people these days don't play the recent older games and I disagree. There's plenty of Q1, Q2, HL players out there. They are still creating new content (maps, models, etc.) so those scenes are still alive although not as large as they used to be.
The last thing I'll say is I totally disagree about once you're over 35 you can't game because you're a loser or manchild or somthing along those lines. I was on a blizzard board a while back and some guy stated that he thought most gamers are in the 15-20 year old range. Gamers came out of the woodwork to tell their age and why they game. The average gamer was over 40 and the oldest was 72!
Don't let people who do no research and simply speculate convince you of something that is completely untrue.
Gaming is here to stay even if games stopped evolving from this day on.
It's simply a part of our lives...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
I'm way older than David Wong, and part of the original gamers. We were the ones transitioning from pinball machines through Pong to the original video games like like Space Invaders and such.
Guess what, technology marched on, and allowed companies like Atari and Coleco to offer new, challenging games at home. At about the same time my kid brother grew up, and he started on the next wave of games like the original Nintendo. Now my kids play the new consoles, GBA, etc.
Gaming is a form of entertainment that will continue. At one time it was a little silver ball, aided by gravity, bouncing around. Now it's very tiny pixels on a screen. When 3D displays become real, games will probably take advantage of that and in the future, who knows? Maybe everyone will devote their basements to virtual gaming ala Star Trek holodeck instead of pool tables and Mame consoles.
Markets, video game or otherwise, always change, and the companies that can make it happen will replace the ones that can't. The death of those companies doesn't signal the death of the industry. Instead it's a sign of the transformation of the market.
It's not your age that's the problem. It's how long you've been playing video games. The first games you play tend to be the ones you remember as being the best because you were just starting out in computer games and everything is still new and novel.
Here's a few old-school examples:
When I started in games id Software's Wolfenstein 3D was in full stride and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Then came DOOM. For me DOOM was one of the best games ever made, with Wolf3D being among the other top ten contenders.
A year or so later ROTT came out. Technically it was somewhere between Wolf3D and DOOM and a LOT of people who were just getting into gaming thought it was the best thing around. I thought it was crap (and I still do). Was it crap? Objectively, no. Subjectively? For me it was.
Nothing in the FPS world interested me much until Quake 1 came out and we all got real 3D. Since Quake 1 it's mostly been refinements and prettier environs. Nothing has wow'd me like Quake 1 except for Half-Life and that wasn't because of the graphics.
Are these new FPS games (and I use these example because these are what I play) not well done? Are they bilge? Do they suck? Some do, but many are very well made games. They just don't dazzle me anymore because I've been there and seen that. Now there are just more colors and rounder asses on the women.
It's very hard to recapture the wonder you felt when you first started playing games.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
1.
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1. Why does the industry have to crash at all? The movie industry is still around over a century later, dumbass.
Quick, go get your old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.
What? You donated it to a homeless shelter ten years ago? And even they don't play it, some guy using it as a little sandwich-holder? I mean, great games continued to come out for the NES right up until it went out of style. Developers could be making games for it today. So why is it extinct?
It's the same reason. The novelty wore off.
This is inaccurate. Nintendo's ARE still played. There are people who genuinely enjoy older, simpler games. Admittedly, these people probably compose a small percentage of the gaming market, that's really irrelevant because the problem was never that people bought new consoles only because the novelty wore off. The problem was that there was always something newer and better around the corner. For the last twenty years there has consistently been a newer and more advanced game console just over the horizon, and assuming equal quality of titles between the two, who would want to stick with the older, crappier looking games?
The driving force for upgrades was simply the availability of better hardware, not that people stopped liking games being made for older systems. It's all relative.
Interesting that he should pick Goldeneye and Red Faction as comparison to prove his point about game innovation plateauing, and it makes we wonder if he actually checked out these games first?
Red Faction has a very well-defined gimmick that few other franchises employ, which is the destructible environments. You can literally blast your way through walls, doors, and floors to get to new areas, and not just in the handful of scripted instances that most games give you.
To me, the ability to essentially carve the landscape in games is a very innovative technical step and brings us a bit closer to real-world VR emulation.
He also used tiny, low-quality shots that mimimize the huge disparity in visual quality between these two games.
3. Again, the novelty of getting to be Luke Skywalker attracted gamers in droves. We were never really able to do that before. The experience of being able to stride down a hallway blowing up monsters with a rail gun was also new to a lot of you. But it comes to the same, doesn't it? The first time you play a level, the monster around the first corner is a surprise. After that, it's homework. It's memorizing, via pure repetition, bad guy placement and ammunition deposits and card keys.
And what is watching a movie the second time around? Does it suddenly dynamically shift? No, just like once you've played a video game, the second time around it is familiar, the same can be said of a movie, but even moreso because you cannot change anything that will occur in that movie.
This is not true of video games, where a game creator can allow for any number of dynamic story elements. Take Deus Ex, where by taking the side of the corrupt government, or the rebel terrorists, the player can influence who survives to help him through unravelling the story, what events occur within the story, and maneuver toward an ending dictated by their own personal values and actions.
We will see infinitely more complexity on this level, stories that unfold with branches and branches depending on what you select. A movie where you can decide whether to work your way into power in an empire or assist the rebels in overthrowing an empire.
Movies, without actually incorporating elements of games, will never be able to fill this niche.
4.
That's both the good news and the bad news, though. Where is the industry going to expand to now? The middle-aged don't play games (more on that in a moment). Who's left? The elderly? The unborn? Microsoft and Nintendo both released new machines in 2001 and both failed. The new machines were not quite new (or novel) enough to catch anybody's attention.
I will now summarize for those of you who cannot be arsed to RTFA:
"I assert that technological novelty is the sole driver of the gaming market. I cannot seem to see, from where I am standing, any new technologies on the horizon that meet my exacting requirements for 'novelty.' Therefore, WE WILL LIVE IN A GAMELESS FUTURE AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
He also seems to be using some stratospherically high standard for "success," in that he calls the Xbox and the Gamecube failures.
He also equates "bad," with "anything I don't like."
Indeed, gaming, much like BSD and Apple, is dying.
I think I'm gonna cut out of work early and go play me some Windwaker.
(P.S. "An interesting and humorous read." Yeah, if you're 13 and like heavy-handed bathroom humor.)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
As long as the public continues to reward movies and games done "by the numbers" that is what will continue to be produced. And every time reviewers hype some piece-of-crap movie or game as the best thing ever to come along, they will drive another nail into the coffin of innovation in those industries.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah this has been happening for sometime now. 3d games have become boring to even myself (a 3d artist/editor/director)
:) They dont care about those issues. They care about release dates, market research, and profits. The big fucking joke is that all of that stuff means shit in the real scheme of success. All of that market research is based on games that broke the mold and sold well. And of course all of the clones of that game. So if you figured out something new, they would be clawing at your balls with fist full of dollars begging you to sign with them.
The game mechanics of 3d games have remained mostly the same with very little inovation. Characters move and control the same through a map. They have very bad interaction issues due to technology limits but also the complexity in whats involved to create a fully interactive world. 3D camera movement and controls as everyone knows, is a HUGE problem. Its never in the right spot. Its always doing the wrong thing. How in the hell can you expect a PC to pick out artistic shots? It just knows to "constrain camera target to main hero character until camera target = plus or minus 180 degrees from the camera, then cut to next camera... constrain camera target to main hero" and repeat.
The fact that games like doom, unreal, etc are repeated each year over and over is proof that we've hit a wall in game play mechanics. Thats why we have franchise sequels instead of truely new games.
And the real reason why we see so many sequels is this.
Movies have even more technological limits than video games. Yet they have been around longer.
The trick is in presentation and story. Thats why DOOM 1 has been polished up into DOOM 2, then Quake, then quake 2, quake arena, and now DOOM 3.
At the heart of it... Its the same game with new window dressings each year.
Game play from Doom 2 to Quake was a bigger jump because you went from fake 3d to real 3d. But really the mechanics of the game play have stayed the same. Run, Jump, Shoot, Strafe.
Theres just so much you can do. But we havent hit that limit yet. In some respects we have but there are some areas of 3d games that havent been touched or explored yet.
Mainly because they require R&D in game play, fancy complex 3d trickery etc
3D is quite difficult. Making a characters hand scrape along the wall freddy kruger style as it runs... hmm yeah you could do it but how convincing would it be?
How about Jackie Chan style fights? We've been playing double dragon for years now in various forms because no one seems to care enough to come up with game play mechanics that solve that artistic vision.
And even that is possible. But the suits tell the developers to "SPEED IT UP"
Yet they have no fucking interest in paying developers to just R&D. Instead they want to pay developers to recreate the game that last sold well.
Oh just for fun... FUCK THE FCC.
This is how it is! I've been playing www.kingsofchaos.com (stupid name) with a bunch of other people on slashdot. Its VERY stripped down- you buy weapons and armor, you attack other people. Thats it. There are no maps, no collaboration. Just attack, and wait to be attacked.
When we started, we got tagged constantly. Now that we have some skills and power, we tag others (and still get tagged by those more powerful than us).
Really, the only appeal is for those who are Obsessive compulsive and like slowly levelling up. But its Massive-multiplayer! Big deal- that just means slow-servers.
Broad-networking is hype. Smart-networking (i.e. a lan party with your friends) is a thousand times better. How many N64 owners can think back to times when they played Golden Eye 4 player, or WaveRace or MarioKart?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
...over the fact that you can't just whip together a little game and have fun. I made C64 programs that were pretty much "state of the art" at maybe 10. 320x256x16 colors with sprites, a stupid tune, some navigation and AI, there wasn't power to do anything advanced... and so could everyone else that had a great idea. Of course there were literally thousands of games, some you'll absolutely love.
It just doesn't work that way with games anymore. I can't write a 3D freeform alpha-blending shader-using multipass-filtering DX9 game photorealistic backgrounds, models and textures with 3D sound effects at CD+ quality, Internet multiplayer code, customization and expansion tools, UI design, AI design and whatnot. There'll only be a few games like that, and they'll be "mainstream".
That's the way every industry is. Look at any "major Hollywood production". It's basicly synonymous with "rehash of some similar story, or the same story (sequel)". Maybe you can find yourself some films you really love among the thousands of low-budget or no-budget movies out there, but they won't have the polish or special effects like the bigshots. That's no indication that big, professional and mainstream movies are dying though.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There are parallels between the book people and the video game people who say the sky is falling for whatever reason. I don't think so, at least with books, which I'm more familiar with: the marketplace today is more robust and diverse than at any other point in history. Virtually any book in print is available within a few days from Amazon, and online projects seek to digitize anything done before 1923. Experimental sites online offer fiction; K5 now has a section for it, and it's not half-bad. In video games, I think there are more options out there now than at any other point in history, especially because one can try anything from a thousand iterations of tetris and pac-man to Unreal Tournament 2004 to a game so avant garde I've never heard of it.
If anything, the problem is not death of novels from the creative side, it's a dearth of people interested in reading and understanding. I'm paraphrasing, but I remember reading about someone asking Gore Vidal why there are so few good books published these days; on the contrary, he said, the problem is that there are so few good readers.
When I look at writers like Elmore Leonard, Chang Rae-Lee, Coatzee, Michael Chabon and others, I'm blown away by their sheer technical virtuosity. Yet people decry the state of books.
To bring this around to video games, I think there are differences no one will dispute (the difficulty of designing a graphics engine, changing technology, huge teams necessary for today's games, etc.), but the bigger probelm is finding people who want to play the most innovative games is probably harder than finding people who want to play games that let them frag someone with a rocket launcher and do it over, and over, and over again. Innovation will still exist; but the better question is how many people will appreciate it. The questions are interesting, and much too subtle for the the hack and slash technique of the original article.
So stop getting all of your collective panties in a wad. PWOT is kind of like theonion.com, but less about news, and more about satirical articles. I'm not quite sure why it was even posted to slashdot. You read PWOT to laugh at stupidity, not for video game news.
Now... Go Go Gadget cocaine shooter! Now... Go Go Gadget cocaine shooter! :)
If you read all the craption contests, you would understand
While I agree witht he author, I think retro will make huge comeback.
See, we started out with only integer units in 2 dimentional space. As time progressed, we got into bigger 2D space (from 4 bits to 32, now 64) We also got floating points thanks to FPUs. (Games were why FPUs became standard issue). But we were still in 2d space. Some were side scrollers, some were top-down, some were persective. Then Wolfenstien 3D came out. Doom then Quake pushed 3d accelerators to the desktop. But then we could interact in a world that we relate to in very real ways.
Next up we'll find theres more challenge in moving in 2 dimensions than 3. That'll help preserve the novelty. But they must remain challenging.
That brings me to the non-retro gaming success story. Masting 3d space is easy, master 2d space a easier (as a subset of 3d space) but 4d and 5d space will be where the fun is.
Video games a are all about challenge. Once you get your physics model and coordination down, you are left with one thing: solving the intelectual challenges. This is why so amny people play RPS still. Generally it's kill, loot, goto kill, level, repeat. EQ has quests which are mildly intelectually challenging.
All of 3d gaming can be rendered easy via circle-strafing. Strafe side-to side while turning and you'll always face your target and circle them. I have not seen a 3d shooter that isn't rendered easy by this technique. Once it no longer works, I'll be intelegtualy challenged to find the bug in the AI or physics model (grenade jumping) that trivializes the game. (I used to be a sniper in Quake - TF - and a good one at that, but what I did became proceedural, nd I lost intrest. Grenade and rocket jumpers were all the same. I'd get them in mid-air 99% of the time.)
Indeed the industry has been relying on glitz and glamor to sell, much like a hot whore. But no one marries a whore, they marry people that are intelectually stimulating. ANd that's going to be the next games. The mind-puzzles. Tomb Raider, Tetris, etc. They all have sppeal for a long time, until the *DESIGNERS* turn it proceedural. It's not the fault of the tech, it's because the designers get lazy.
Escapr from reality, the use of imagination, is why people turn to video games. I predict in 10 years that no video game will ever do the same game twice (like they do today) I bet they won't keep staff around either. Every game is a new team, and no one is allowed to be on the same type of game project as they were on in the past 5 years. This will keep innovation and imagination high.
The other idea is working with other people. When C&C has IPX multiplayer, we played it non-stop weekends at a time. Quake was plaued for weekends at a time. I spent most of my nights on TF maps with my clan. Human interaction is unpredictible (well, a lot less than a computer) (Imagine basketball vs chess, what is more popular)
Killer app of today: The Sims Online. Features imagination, creativity and human interaction. Runner Up: EQ.
Killer app of tomorrow: solving puzzles with other humans online. But the puzzles can't repeat, not even the same type. Maybe a puzzle is to make a puzzle for others to solve - taking turns between puzzlemaking and solving. (An offshoot of this is OpenSource... )
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
While I agree with the author that the gaming industry appear to have reached a plateau, I do not agree with his prediction of the industry's death. A large part of his argument revolves around novelty. The novelty has worn off, nobody's going to buy something that doesn't seem bigger or better.
But just because I plateau has been reached doesn't mean the genre is dying. He is missing the fact that to each new generation, video games will be a novelty. When a newborn of today discovers video games, it will be a complete novelty. There is a first time for everything. This is why I hear 11 year olds laughing at jokes that I first found funny 25 years ago. Yeah, I don't find them funny anymore, but the kids of today do because they haven't heard them before.
So the video game "Blow Up Everybody 2015" will sell jsut fine. It might play just like Halflife, and *I* might find it boring. But the kids of 2015 will think it rocks.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I cannot disagree with him on the end of the industry, and I am in the that original group of gamers, and I have three children from 5-15 (please no math). I think he is right, but for the wrong reason.
My 15 year old showed some interest in the PS2, but he would rather play games on the computer. My younger children are much more interested in the computer, and the console games are doing a terrible job making games for younger children. I will not let my 7 year old play Vice City anyway, and that is what the consoles are putting out.
That is the key problem now. All the games target teens, and college students, and most of those games can be played on the computer. The only thing that kept the N64 from being a disaster was Pokemon. The only chance they have is to make games that the younger kids can play, and are interested in playing. It can be done, but the focus is on making the games prettier, but not creating new, interesting content for the next generation, and that is why it will crash.
shaders mean exactly zero when it comes to gameplay.
Clear, Dark Skies
"You see, there was a video game industry apocalypse once before, in the early 80's. The market was flushed down the toilet by a putrid swirl of bad Atari games, players realizing that Hot Dog Maze was just Pac-Man with different colors. They didn't abandon the Atari 2600 in favor of something better. They abandoned it in favor of not playing video games."
And yet the players still swamped the arcades - something the president of Nintendo realized before releasing his NES onto the American market. The problem with the Atari was not that all the games stagnated. There was still innovation, even in the 1983-1984. The problem was cartridge glut. No one could find those great games under the mounds of useless trash. Everyone could make games for the Atari and everyone did - even ppl who had no right making video games (Colgate anyone?). That is one of the reasons why the magazine Nintendo Power and the Nintendo License was so mind-boggingly important. It was an assurance of quality. Now we have the Internet. You are truely gutsy for buying games now without looking for reviews first. We have a similiar environment to 1983 now, but the difference is we can tell what is good/crap. As such, his analogy to the 80's fails. Just becuase we are mired knee deep in trash doesn't mean we will see a similiar crash.
On a greater note, there is just something about video games that keep pulling people back. I still go back and play Mario 3. I still spend hours on end sometimes playing Keystone Kapers and Laser Blast. It is more than just the novelty that draws people to games. It is more than just something to do. It is an experience that transcends your current reality. As the author said, it allows you to be Luke Skywalker - but just becuase you don't want to permantely be Luke Skywalker does not mean that no one will ever replay the game. The games keep bringing people back. While I agree with him that in fact the market for 'Buy this game cause we have modeled dust particles' is going to die, the whole market won't. Games that are good and inventive will still survive. A lot of companies will drop out, no doubt. But the ones like Nintendo that can still be inventive with gameplay and still bring about a great experience will still go on.
As for the movie analysis, there is a difference he hasn't taken into account. The Internet. Not only can we have games that involve ppl in stories but we have games that can involve people in stories with their friends. When you add the fact that not only you but your friend can play, the possibilities grow exponentially larger. Look at WoW and Everquest. They may not even be games anymore. Rather they are environments the user can interact in. You don't get the same with a movie. With a movie you are forcefed the producers/directors vision of what he wants you to see. With games you get a choice. You get to skip shit you don't like and focus on stuff you do like. And with the birth of the Internet, those choices will multiple with future games, not decline. And the 'online gmers' he talks about are by far a minority in my experience. I know a lot of people that play games online just for fun and not becuase they have a need to boost their self esteem by zerg rushing noobs. In addition, with improving AI's we also are losing the predicatble games. The Future? In one game, the opponent may be down a hall, in another he may have moved a different direction. We are quickly moving away from bound points and set patrol paths. In the future, you will be attacking units of enemies, not just pre defined defenses. Take a look at the plans for Thief 3 if you don't believe me.
In additon, if his analogy was true, we would have never watched movies as long as we have. Afterall, there are only so many romances you can watch, only so many war movies right. The novely of seeing them on the screen should have worn off and left us all back with our books. So why hasn't it? Hollywood and books gives us experiences that are different and hence they both can exist together. T
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
While the author makes a good point that point-and-shoot gameswill only go so far, I think he misses three key points:
1) We're starting to see more and more action games merge with elements of role-playing games. I thought that GTA: Vice City was really moving in this direction, where instead of physically growing stronger you get more influence and wealth to do whatever you want but you can take it in whatever order you want. Granted, there are several aspects of RPG that could be incorporated into that game if someone felt like it (control your own fate, have some kind of karma scale that causes people to react differently towards you, etc.), but expect to see many more games incorporating both these aspects in the coming years. Some of these will be retreads of VC or any number of already existant games (note similarities between Fallout: BOS and Dark Alliance 2 for Xbox) but others will forge new frontiers (Crimson Skies?).
2) Online gameplying is *burgeoning*. My brother plays Star Wars: Galaxies almost every other day and has two characters. He knows people from around the world just by playing with them and interacting digitally. Look at Final Fantasy XI and the huge number of Japanese and American players on it: the companies involved get $(X)/month without having to do much more than upgrade the system and its option every so often. I predict that this will turn into a mainstay of the video game market, especially for the true RPG fans.
3) Like it or not, the advanced military projects of VR and newer man-machine integration systems will eventually become incorporated into video game systems and maybe even the Internet. Imagine video games in a 3-D setting either by VR or "plug-and-play" a la Matrix from Shadowrun. Predicting where technology will go is tricky, but developments in holograph technology and other *exotic* computer applications are already being worked on. Maybe we've hit a temporary plateau, but that doesn't mean it is permanent by any means. How long is it before we could see a quantum processor running a fully interactive video game system with either Resident Evil 13 (where you can feel the zombies attack you and maybe play as one yourself?) or Grand Theft Auto: 7.0 in the city of your choice with fully accurate maps. The possibilities for technological advancement are endless and should not be automatically discounted just because things have "slowed down" in the last few years.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
What made good games in the past is different then what makes a good game now.
Consider the programming restrictions that a C64 game had compared to any modern game. The programmers knew that they could only do so much with the graphics so they consentrated on plot/level design.
Most modern games only get harder because the AI is instructed to "shoot straighter". Take any FPS game and the only difference in levels is that the AI is a better shot.
RPG's suffer a similar fate (although a bit more understandably) where the bad guys have more health and more powerfull weapons/spells BUT (not understandably) heal quicker too.
Consoles by nature should always have more exciting game-play (same reason for quality on C64), while PC's should always have a wider range of games available (using more horsepower).
Maybe I am just getting too old for this anymore, but I miss the days of playing a game that kept me captivated. RPG's have just become boring, FPS are repetative twitch-fests (I only play T2 anymore), strategy games have been done to death. Moo2 & Civ are still excellent, but I can win on any setting because I have played them so much I know the games limitation and advantages in the tech-tree.
RTS are just Turn-based games for the twitch players. Whoever builds more units wins.
The original D&D C64 games were winners, so were most turn-based strategy. The only original quality FPS was Descent (everything else was an evolution of Wolf3d).
Here's an idea: let writers create game ideas, not programers. Too many big-biz software publishing houses only make "safe" games. This is the same reason that 90% of the Hollywood movies suck too.
There is no creativity left.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Yeah, seriously. On one hand, he complains that the only difference between this year's releases and last year's is the graphics quality and bemoans the lack of an increase in gameplay quality.
However, he completely ignores games like Madden, which are constantly improving the accuracy of their simulators. Every year, the players act and move like real players. The opposing team makes better decisions and doesn't run the clock out on itself. Using the increased processing power to have a better AI is exactly what this franchise has done and why it has always been so sucessful. And it's exactly what the author wanted to see in modern games.
I guess pointing this out wouldn't suficiently pander to his target-demographic of doomsday naysayers.
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
Between the bad satire article and /. goons with their overly serious responses, I think I've lost my faith in humanity.
Regardless, the fact remains that video games are rarely anything more than pushing an avatar through virtual space. That virtual space and graphics for the avatar will typically remain at the current cutting-edge of graphics, so it will tend to look similar to other games of the same generation.
Before the 3D revolution, most 2D titles had the same basic appearance, colors, audible tones, etc. Grass was GREEN and water was BLUE. Most old gamers can tell you which console/arcade system a game was for after simply looking at a screen shot.
My advice: Quit complaining and taking gaming so seriously. Don't be a fanboy for one developer or hardware company (Nvidia, for instance) -- as these leaders today will be gone tomorrow.
I have worked on a great many projects, and as of late it's all been in the freespace 2 community. We stretched that engine to it's limits well before we go ahold of the source code, and while the source code project (For which I am the network programmer) has brough us a long way - it would be nothing without that which we already had: Content Sure nice and shiny is cool, but that isn't what really gets you the money or the ratings. Nice graphics are just bonus points, gameplay is what get's you players. There are a great many games out there that I hate due to technical problems with them - and yet they have vast numbers of gamers (Counter Strike comes to mind). The game industry isn't going to die, stop acting like chicken little.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Perhaps its a need to defend my love of gaming, but that article was mostly bullshit. Most of time I was reading it, I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. I hope it was.
:).
I won't waste time arguing about how games are repeating their formulas, which you've all mentioned already that Hollywood does the same; that like Hollywood, games will simply refine and re-tell. I won't waste a good rant on how fucked up an argument could be that gaming, indeed technology, has reached a graphical plateau.
There is one good point, however: the aging First Generation and the New Generation.
Someone earlier mentioned that most of the First Generation, defined by me as anyone who *remembers* when the NES was rolled out (or any earlier console), are getting on with their lives, getting married, having children, and basically getting weighed down with other responsiblities. I'm 25, consider myself a First Gen Gamer (my first 'console' was a TI-99/4A, with speech synth!!), married, have a baby boy, a house, a career, and the other crap. Gaming these days isn't like it used to be. Along with that, I find myself drawn to only the best of the best of games. I don't have time or money to buy and sift through the crap games from the greats.
Personally, I think its the switch to the New Generation of gamers thats gonna be the problem, not the industry itself. Most of us First Gens gaming will slow to a crawl, and the New Gens will be the ones screaming to the developers as to what they want. Most of the New Gens aren't as wowed by ever-increasing technology as us First Gens are. For us, the novelty is still there while the New Gens mostly expect it.
The industry isn't going to know how to deal with the New Gens at first. They're a completely different breed. And us First Gens are only gonna slow in our gaming (tho we may not necessarily slow down in the purchasing of them
Then again, the switch could be seamless. Who knows.
Just watch Japan. If it happens in the game industry, it will happen there first.
You're missing the point. The size of the levels won't be to make them harder, it'll be to make them MORE FUN and to ELIMINATE LOAD POINTS. Where you can go from one point in the world to any other, without hitting a load screen.
And again, on AI: "Killer" AI is NOT BETTER. "BETTER" AI is an AI that MORE CLOSELY CONFORMS TO HOW THE SUBJECT WOULD ACTUALLY REACT. And that takes a ton of compute cycles.
Nothing pisses me off more then a point in a game where I have 10 options, none of which I like.
Nothing pisses me off than being at work and having 10 or more options on what to do, none of which I'd like to be doing. WHAT'S YOUR POINT? If the gameplay and story you're currently on are COMPELLING, one or two points where you're making a hard choice - the "I don't like any of these options but I have to pick one" choice - can lead down a really cool story arc for all you know.
I will pay $20.00 to go to a crappy movie with my wife and we will have a good time, even if all we do is poke fun of the movie. I won't pay $35-$55 for a crappy game that will frustrate me for a long time.
Dunno what to tell you there. Personally, if I go to a movie that's really that bad, I want my money back. At least with the game, you have the chance to take it back to a resale store and recoup your losses. You OWN a copy. After that movie, you're out your $20 whether the movie rocked or sucked, after the game you can get some of it back.
Would you pay a few bucks a month to RENT games, and be able to return ones you don't like? Try Gamefly, my friend. You might start finding games you like again with a lot less exposure. Or read some damned game reviews, we reviewers work our butts off to steer you clear of the bad games.
Because it comes off like it's trying to make a point, but never really backs it up - instead it just hides it's tongue deep in cheek to cover up a rather loose munging of facts.
Yeah, OK - Red Faction 2 wasn't much different than Goldeneye, especially if you aren't counting texture depth, level size, polygon count, vehicles AND geomod technology. Just because two games can produce screenshot of blockish rooms doesn't mean they're even remotely similar.
Which kinda pulls the rug out of the "tech plateau" which seems like, if there is a foundation for a logical argument, is the only one.
If technology has plateau'd so much, how come game requirements keep going up at nearly the same rate? I'm guessing his next article is "The Radeon 9800 is a capitalist conspiracy!!"
PC games are healthy as ever, with releases like Far Cry, Half Life 2, Doom III, and many others. (And the more enlightened PC gamers are surely knowledgable about the incredible PRGs and adventure games that are into production now - I won't go into boring details).
Consoles are limited machines, they can only play certain types of games, mostly action, due to the limited form of input. Average Joe will not cash out for the same concept as last year, only with better graphics.
Personally, I am down to playing all the good PC games I missed, especially adventures. Too much fun. Yesterday I finished 'day of the tentacle'...very good adventure. Next is 'lure of the temptress'.
I got a kick out of this quote. I and most of my friends are in our 40's (and really do remember Pong unlike this 29- year old). That makes me an intellectually stunted manchild (never mind that many of us hold Ph.D.s):
>>>
The original video game generation is growing up. I know, because I'm one of them...
But I'm almost 30 now, worried with mortgages and job stress and coffin shopping. My peers all have their own children, the household toy budget spent on the offspring, not the adults.
A few of us can still play games at 30, I suppose. You cannot play games at 35 or 40 and seem like anything but an intellectually-stunted manchild, there in your sweater vest, the control pad tangled in your long, gray, drool-soaked beard."
We're on a technological plateau. The next real leap, the next real difference in how we play games via sensory suits or neural inputs or whatever, is still too far away and too expensive.
Yes, a fair amount of time will likely pass before the next technological innovation that makes a significant change in computer based games, and even more time will pass before that technology is cheap enough that it's widely distributed.
That said, the computer game industry seems to me to be subset of the larger game industry more than of the technology industry. The reason that game designers are different from demo designers is that a game is not indended to display how a creative person can push the limits of technology in an appealing way; rather games are intended to be fun to play. There might be a "holy crap, how did they do that?" element to a computer game, but that's not really the point.
Take MMORPGs, for example. A technological advance was required for these games to be possible, but they're not popular because networking technology is cool...they're popular because they're a new, fun kind of game to a lot of people. (And yes, I know that they're basically not new in any sense, either from a game design or technology perspective, but you know what I mean.) In all the cases that I've seen, in fact, the gee-whiz graphics factor has been noticeably lacking...the cool technology is invisible from a gameplay perspective.
The SIMS became absurdly popular for a while. Pretty FPS games were big before that. "You Don't Know Jack" had its day in the sun. Myst and its knockoffs ruled the world ages ago, and we haven't even come close to far enough back to hit the Age of Atari discussed in the article. In all these cases, the popular game or games presented something new, or offered it in an intriguing new way...technology almost always played a role in that, but in my opinion the tech was rarely the primary factor. Gameplay, basically, rules.
Hmmm...I started this post about three hours ago and just now got back to it. Eh, you all get the idea of my ravings...no point in finishing it... :)
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Sorry but thats not exactly the whole 'Video Game" ladscape. Back in the mid and late 70's arcades arose, and blossomed at a ridiculous rate. This large growth in the "Arcade" market spawned home consoles. Atari 2600 being the first in the US to really penetrate a large percentage of US homes (sorry don't know about the rest of the world, simply relying on my memory as a kid). This set up the downfall of arcades, as well as parent groups wanting these arcades to be shut down for reasons that are still beyond me.
See I don't think the home console market crashed, I believe the entire Video game market crashed because of the growth in the home market cannibalized the arcade market. This sudden and abrupt shift was too much and poeple lost alot of money, Warner Communications (who bought Atari with greed in their hearts) started firing people left and right, and thats around the same period that retarded ET game came into being.
Anyway, Arcades imploded in the early and mid 80's, and dragged the home market along with them.
The current situation is no where like that today. There is no similiar, yet competing industry to destabilize the current dominance of video games as a whole. PC and consoles are the closest markets and they are so similiar that there really is no difference at all.
off to play some SOCOM II...
-a 34 yo gamer
--
"Hear someone complaining about something that someone else likes, and you will hear someone not understanding something that someone else does."
--My grandpa.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
In my opinion, the reasons video games have become more stagnant is that develors use graphics and technology as the centerpiece of the game rather than the affability of the gameplay itself. The reason that games like Mario and Tetris still hold some value today (I actually play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out all the time on my friends NES) is that they were gameplay centric and fun no matter what Mario's head looked like.
Today it seems that game companies are content to have it really look like Luke Skywalker but be truly boring to play after the first time through it drolling at the graphics and the cut scenes. That is why the classics, are the classics and todays games don't have the same staying power as they do. It is always so disappointing when you have games based on immersion, a la Star Wars, that has no value from the gameplay.
This is why games like GTA and the Sims are successfuly because they focus on the gameplay, with graphics only as the medium, and not what the gamer is paying for
Interested in Sports with a brain? --> http://dispatchesofj.blogspot.com/
Remember Space Invaders? And how many "aliens in rows shooting downward at rocket" games were there afterwards because people couldn't think outside of that?
After Manic Miner came out on the ZX Spectrum, you couldn't move for platform games.
3d shooters like Doom and Quake were great, but that's all we seem to get sold in the arcade game market now.
Is there someone out there making anything as revolutionary as Lemmings or Elite any more?
Talk to people younger than you about movies and you'll realize that they're clueless about movies before their time. I'm 23 and I've talked to several people my own age that never saw Star Wars, ET, Mad Max, and other classics. This is in a country where LOTS of video stores carry a good amount of the older titles in addition to the current ones. Why? Because you can get them all on VHS and a good amount of them on DVD, especially if they're classics. Everyone has at least one of those players in their home so they only have to carry the titles in two formats. Still, only a minority of us are going to seek out the older classic movies. Blame our capitalistic society for breeding people that focus on the latest shiny object. With video games, it's even worse! There's a few dozen different consoles and less gamers than there are movie watchers. Halo was a launch title on the Xbox and you can still rent or buy it anywhere because the Xbox is the current console. Within months after the next generation console coming out, Halo will start to disappear from the shelves. Gamers buy the new systems because the new games come out for the new systems. If it were as cheap to port a GameCube game to the N64 as it is to release a movie on DVD and VHS, it would be done! The point I'm trying to make is that it's unrealistic from a capitalistic standpoint to have a readily available supply of old games and to create new games for old platforms.
The Current Console Race
While throwing down my thoughts, I'd like to give the definitive reasons why the Playstation and the Playstation 2 have done so well and where video games are going. I have yet to be wrong in my predictions on the video game industry. The fight started between Sega and Nintendo. After the 16-bit war, Sega placed their bets on releasing systems with revolutionary changes ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, they executed their ideas poorly and the gamers didn't go for it. System after system flopped including the Dreamcast which I would say is only half a generation ahead of the N64. Despite the half-generation leap, I believe the Dreamcast would have actually made it if they didn't have a poor reputation due to the several failed systems they quickly abandoned in favor of new ventures. Who would want to buy a Sega console when their prior Sega purchases died within a year of launch? Nintendo learned their lesson after the first mistake, the Virtual Boy and didn't follow Sega to the hardware grave. My guess is that these flops scared Nintendo into backing out of the joint venture with Sony on the CD attachment for the SNES. They decided to let Sony run with it and make the Playstation, betting that their tried and true methods would prevail. What they didn't count on was the "AOL CD Effect" that Sony would employ. Playstation came out and swamped the aisles with titles by basically giving developers free range. A one year head start with a solid system and TONS of games gave the appearance that they were the only system in existence. Then the N64 came out and was superior to the playstation. The games didn't just look 3Dish, they were actually rendered in 3D and you could feel the depth. Unfortunately, by the time the N64 came out, everyone and their best friend had gotten sick of waiting and bought a Playstation. With its strong support and not too far behind graphics, it kept the lead. Only those that decided to keep waiting for the N64 or those that could afford multiple gaming systems got the N64. People who were just getting their first system at this point went with what their friends had or were more interested in mature content than the immersive 3D environment that the N64 offered. Nintendo made just enough money to keep moving while Sony took the throne. When the PS2 came out, it was the same story all over again, only this time Microsoft joined Nintendo. You'd think one of them would have learned! Hell, Microsoft didn't even learn from the N64 controller complaint
When I was 12 years old, I was able to buy about 2 games per year. One I usually got for Christmas, and maybe I picked up one or two more saving my allowance and birthday money. You also had to make damn sure you got a good game when you were able to get one. And often times we only had Nintendo Power Propaganda and word of mouth to go on, so there were inevitable disappointments.
But I had a dream. I dreamt that one day I would be able to walk into Toy's R Us, and gaze upon that long aisle of games and gaming systems, and buy any damn thing I wanted. I would pull a hundred tickets if need be, walk them to the "game cage" and buy a whole damned system, even if there was only one game I wanted for it. I am sure many of the other gamers who cut their teeth on Pitfall Harry had a similar dream.
Then guess what happened. Time passed, we got jobs. Many of us went into Computers because of our experience with computer games. Many of us were employed during the boom, making good money, and not yet caring enough to be ultra-conservative with it. So what did we do? We lived the dream. We bought Voodoo 2 cards so we couldn't see pixels in the walls in Quake, we bought N64s becasue Waverace had cool water, we bought PS1's because Twisted Metal was evil as hell. We got used to gaming on the couch and upgraded to Xboxs and Ps2's. I completed my dream when I walked into Traget and bought a cute little gamecube just because I wanted to play Zelda on it. I know many of you did too.
After "living the dream" for a while my inner 12 year old self has caught up to my calender age. I am starting to consider "Will I be interested in this game long enough to finish it? Will I have time? Maybe I will rent it. Maybe reading a review is enough". I am sensing that the "living the dream" is coming to an end, in myself and in others.
I wonder what effect "the dream" had on gaming sales in the 97-02 era. I wonder what effect no longer living "the dream" will have in the 04-08 era. Are there children today dreaming about walking into a gamestop and saying "gimme one of everything"?
Who, aside from a few cinema fans, knew of Quentin Tarantino before 1994?
Um, almost everyone?
True Romance and Resevoir Dogs were 2 of the most hyped movies of the years they were released, and by the time Pulp Fiction was out, Tarantino was already a media darling.
Indie film my ass.