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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 may be a little bit old school, but nothing has generated as much excitement as the release of a new Mario game or Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (US) used to when I was younger. Perhaps age has something to do with it, or it could be a lack of quality and fun. My money is on the latter.
In the last couple of days there have been news stories heralding the fact that video gaming is cutting noticeable chunks out of TV viewership in the US. It might just be a reaction to the fact that TV these days doesn't suck - if it sucked it would be good for something.
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.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
I'm not so sure comparing sports games to other types is a fair comparison. Sure, Madden 2004 has a limited amount of improvement....but that doesn't mean newer, fresher, more interesting games can't be developed. Saying "Creativity" is dead seems too simple to me, especially when your example is a sporting game. Think of games like Tetris or Snood: before they were created no one would've thought they'd be so addictive. While I agree that a limit to "realism" may occur soon, I certainly don't think that a lack of new games will occur.
I disagree. The movie industry is still booming, and since the 1960's the only "improvements" in the technology have been special effects... sure the ratio of crappy games to fun games will contiue to change, but there are still innovative games that continue to captivate my imagination after 25 years of gaming. The article is funny, and interesting, but I disagree that we're seeing the end of an industry.
I do generally like MMORPGs, but I found myself uninstalling FFXI and cancelling my subscription in order to make room for my MAME collection (true story).
I'd rather play the classics - I especially like the MegaDrive (it's not a Genesis, silly Americans) versions of Sonic the Hedgehog. I've been meaning to pick up an old console on eBay so I can play them properly again, it was amazing when I saved my money for weeks to buy it back then and it still kicks the ass of many experiences out there. I do love new games too (UT2004, Soul Calibur 2 and the highly innovative Jet Set Radio series) but more often than not the simple elegance of a well done old game will win out.
I believe you are on to something when you bring up the realm of MMO's. This is the realm where a basic amount of innovation is required by the developers, and then the rest of the innovation is brought about by the players themselves. With the advent of realistic physics, player-created objects, and detailed engines, a lot of new things can be brought about. This will help to jumpstart the stagnating game industry.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
It's true that gaming is nearing some sort of revolution in the way the industry works. Games now are SO complex, and require such ridiculous development time that they have to be stupidly successful for any profit to be made. In order to find that success, even more money is poured into marketing.
I paid $75 for Sonic the Hedgehog, but I also paid $75 for Railroad Tyocoon 3. I am damn sure that RRT took an order of magnitude more money to develop, and this is only going to continue.
What's really interesting is what's happening in the handheld sector. Game Boy Advance is making a killing, and games on cellphones are everywhere. These games are much simpler to develop as far as I understand, and more and more people are playing them. Simpler is often better... When the industry moved full steam ahead into 3D, I don't think it was realized how much of a challenge it would be to continue to make games look bigger and better while selling them for the same price.
Clearly, there is a reason of this polishing trend. I don't think this is good but it is what people want.
Look at GTA for example, it doesn't have anything new but still it is one of the most popular games.
On the other hand, maybe lack of new ideas is related with increasing cost of producing a new game (number of designers, programmers etc). Publishers don't want to risk their money with completely new ideas.
I think gaming has become a little like the car industry in that it has become standardized. Everyone knows what RPG and FPS stand for now, and the industry, for better or for worse, uses DirectX as the default base (I know this is widening). But one thing game makers need to deal with is that it is already harder to pry my money out of my wallet for a game than it was 5 years ago.
I still play horribly outdated games like Warcraft 2 because they are fun, and in the day of amazon.com I can actually find out what lots of other people think of the game in about 5 seconds. Then there are the game forums where you find out exactly how buggy the game is before they release the first patch.
Bottom-line - standards are going up, at least mine are. I expect something high-quality for my $50 and I can easily research past the marketing. Having said that, I plan on gaming for decades to come.
I just did that last night too, but for different reasons. What worries me is that the person I talked to on the phone said that my CD Key for the game would become invalid after 3 month, and that there was no way to get a new key other then buying the game again. This sucks if at some point I change me mind and want to play some more.
I was born in 1983, so I never really encountered a lot of the older arcade games.
:)
However, when I encountered SolarWolf under Linux, I was instantly addicted.
I was especially shocked when I beat it after fifty levels..I'd hardly noticed the time go by.
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People that write articles like this often forget the "Clerks" factor. Aka, the independant artist factor.
If you poke around online, you can find TONS of independant groups creating entirely new games on their own, for little to no money.
This is similar to what kevin smith did in producing the movie "clerks." He, on his own, made some money, and produced his own film. It became a smashing success and lead to the creation of several new, highly innovative and creative films.
There is no reason this trend cannot continue in game producing. Yes, mainstream games will MOSTLY be a rehash of the same thing. But there will still be the occasional gem that falls in from outside. I doubt gaming is going to die.
no
There is no reason storytelling cannot be as powerful in video games as it is in movies. Every couple of months I fire up Halo just so I can play through the last level in "Legendary" mode and watch the easter egg cut scene. It's funny. It makes me laugh.
The only limitation faced by today's game companies is that they just don't have very good storytellers. Great programmers, brilliant artists, and fiendish level designers. But terrible writing. The fact that 16 year olds are the target audience doesn't help, either. But that is changing.
Neverwinter Nights has almost hit upon the right combination: a toolset for allowing others to tell stories. Besides a few technical limitations, their biggest mistake has been in their business model. By not allowing authors to sell content the are creating a disincentive to anyone pouring in tons of time. The best stuff I've seen, and in fact the only good stuff I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked at a whole lot) was written by a guy who is basically using NWN to create a portfolio to find a job after he graduates from college. He's invested the time because he does plan to get 'paid', if indirectly, for his work.
Or take a look at Red vs. Blue. Done with the Halo engine, it's freakin' brilliant. Non-gamers I know, non-gaming GIRLS even (well, according to 3rd party reports; I don't actually know any girls like that) think Red vs. Blue is a masterpiece.
The point is that the story telling quality of most games is still terribly primitive, and it won't take technological innovation to make it better. We just need better story tellers to try their hand at it. When that happens the best of the best will be classics for a long, long time, regardless of how out-of-date the fog effects in them become.
Assuming our descendents can find the hardware to play them, of course.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
Massive-multiplayer as realized today is B-O-R-I-N-G.
I have a friend who swears by them. He talked me into buying the Star Wars MMORPG.
I tried it for a week.
It was hideous. I'd never played such a game. I should say, I don't see one bit of attraction for games which are about collecting "bone" to make my character strong, which lets me collect more stuff to make my character stronger.
he keeps showing me these different games, and all of them at their core are the same. Its something, but its not gaming. Its social interaction in a stilted way without the benefit of actual humans.
I used to make fun of D&D guys, but at least they get together to play games in person. The MMORPG's combine the worst elements of gaming with no human interactivity. You couldn't pick a worse combination.
MMORPG's won't get better until they solve one fundamental problem...daily life is boring, and not everybody can be Luke Skywalker in an MMPORG.
There's no two ways about it: Yamauchi has a point. Too many developers are relying on technology instead of creativity. But does that really mean that the videogame industry is going to crash again? Mr. Wong really doesn't show the connection. All he has managed to truly establish are the following points:
That's really not establishing much that we don't already know. In fact, those two problems have been a consistent problem for videogaming since the 16-bit days. All this article does tries to do is shut up (or incite) gamers that don't intelligently examine their own hobby.
What his article misses is that videogaming is maturing as an artistic medium. The only problem, as with any medium, is that you have to take the bad with the good. For every innovative, creative game like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, you'll have five NBA Jam titles. Not only that, but some of the best stuff (like Wind Waker) will get ignored by the general populace in favor of crap. Hence why the list of the top-grossing films of all time does not include gems like The Shawshank Redemption (but Titanic is near the top), and why Wind Waker was not as successful as Nintendo would have liked.
Videogaming is not going anywhere because, despite its faults, it offers a form of entertainment that no other medium can: interactivity. In other words, people love Mario because, when you're holding the controller, Mario is you. The Sims offers a better dollhouse experience than any "real" dollhouse ever could. Ridge Racer tops Hot Wheels any day. And few films can provide the same depth, the same experience as Wind Waker or Final Fantasy VII.
Recommended reading: Wolf, Mark J.P., ed. The Medium of the Video Game. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Spekkio Master of War
multiplayer gaming is fun if you win. The people asking you if you want to play doom at lunchtime are the people who whip your ass at it. How do you make a multiplayer game where everybody wins? Cue The Sims and zero score game posts
We may have a graphical-niceties plateau, at some point. We're not there quite yet.
But, what can be done with improved processing power from now on?
1. BETTER AI. We can improve AI at range. Instead of monsters staying in one place in a game till they hear the player, they can ALL be moving around in the level, ALL the time. If you never know exactly where they are, the game gets more exciting. One time you go through, sure, they might be right around the corner - the next, they're NOT right there, and instead they're sitting back waiting to ambush you somewhere else.
This is not to say that better AI is killer AI, by the way. Better AI is the AI that CLOSEST APPROXIMATES WHAT THE CREATURE SHOULD DO. If I'm in a D&D adventure and killing Orcs, I expect them to ACT like Orcs. If they're some devious wizard, I expect run-and-snipe tactics. If they're a brawny brawler, I expect to be charged. The better processing power you have, the less you have to cut corners, and the deeper you can make the AI such that a creature not only looks and sounds as expected, but ACTS like one might expect it to.
2. EXPANDED LEVEL SIZE. This is one of those biggies. Doom, for all its technological prowess of the time, relied on sending players back and forth through levels a lot. Hexen, with its "hub" setup, even more so - reusing content to make things SEEM much bigger than they were.
The PS2 can't handle the size of areas we want these days. Best example is the PS2 port of Deus Ex, where every level got chopped up into 5-10 areas with load zones in order to fit them together, as compared to the original PC version (which still rocks, BTW).
3. Multilinear gameplay. THIS is where the "in the movies" feel comes from - where YOU, the GAMER, are picking what the story is. Choosing your side and defining what your character thinks/feels is a level of immersion that makes pencil-and-paper gaming still survive and even thrive today, and video games are finally going expand out from the "reading a book" format of the Final Fantasy 'roleplaying' idea, into the TRUE Roleplaying idea where you have a control over your character's destiny and placement.
4. Finally, he misses out on where video games are going. Look at Hollywood: how many pathetic, bad, annoying sequel movies or just bad premises with bad actors are put into theaters or straight to video each year? TONS. The Video Game industry is the same way, and the reviewers are important in both industry in getting people to buy in - but the number of games is a sign of long-term health, not a signal of impending doom.
Ex-fucking-actly. Everyone who bitches about gaming not being as good as it used to be is either A. outgrowing it or B. just pissed off because they finished their favorite game and can never get the same excitement from any other game ever again.
Before people go flaming me, I fit into this category! I've both outgrown gaming (for the most part) and played through my favorite games more times than I probably should have.
But I still recognize that new games are enticing, complex, and most definitely innovative. Especially on the GameCube. Personally, I won't be playing the GC until I can emulate it (I emulate all my console games as a matter of principle), but just because I'm quirky like that doesn't make me respect modern games any less.
I don't agree with the grandparent and I don't agree with the article. Modern gaming is fine. If it doesn't interest you, find another game, or find another hobby.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I'd have to disagree, while I think it's true that sequels really started taking off in the 80's, there were plenty of movie plots that were reused prior to that time period. If you look at a lot of the spaghetti westerns, or world war II movies, or noir films of prior years, there is plenty of reuse of plots and character types and locales. So I don't think that you can say that movies were incredibly original in the past, I think it's more that we tend to remember the standouts and 20 or 30 years from now, peoeple will be saying the same things about movies (and videogames) as they are today, but no on will remember "Police Academy in Outer Space".
Actually, it sounds a lot like what happened to John Carmack and John Romero after DOOM came out. And it happened about the same time. Curious....
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson
Nintendo did two interesting things here. One, they declared that they were the only source for carts. You wanted a Nintendo cart, they had to be the ones manufacturing it.
Spin-off of this was also that carts are expensive to make, and they take a while; do you order a few, and risk it selling out, and lose the momentum while it takes three months to make a new batch? Or order a lot and risk having a bunch of unsold merch on your hands?
The second thing they did was limit companies to a few titles a year; five per company, I think, was the number. This forced the companies to make damn sure they released good product.
Compare this to the Playstation model; several hundred thousand CDs could be pressed in a weekend for pennies apieces, and any old pile of crap you can think of, you can shovel onto a PS disc.
Sony, however, picked the right time to move to a non cart based format, as the N64 vs PS1 slaughter showed.
Neat trivia fact: the PS1 was originally supposed to be a addon to the SNES.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
No. All that means is instead of dealing with 4K assholes on a 5K server, I'll need to deal with 90K assholes on a 100K server. Gee, what fun.
WHat MMOs need are to separate playstyles and allow niche markets. For example- I'm a role player. I enjoy pvp and other aspects of the game, but the main fun is interacting with other rpers. If I need to deal with a bunch of people talking about the baseball game every time I log on, it quickly takes the fun away.
What MMOs should do is make a lot of targeted servers for specific portions of their audience. Hardcore PK server. Role play server. PVP- server. And so on. Separation like this will ensure everyone has more fun by providing them with the experience they want to have. And for those who are cross-overs and like more than one type of playstyle, they can make characters on multiple servers.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This is from the same guy that claims there is no Saddam Hussein:)
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Game of the Year. A very realistic game, at least in terms of social engineering. It's slowpaced, but steady. Very immersive. You can be a thief, a king of thieves, a mage, become a vampire, be a bounty hunter, join the underworld, etc. etc. etc. Everything's open. It's games like these that foreground the importance of social engineering (ya ya, vague term but I hope you know what I mean).
Have you ever gone out paintball shooting with your friends / co-workers? It's far more realistic than the most advanced game on the market today. Why? There are more ways to interact with your environment. Right now, we just interact with the games via our two hands and eyes. Maybe some foot action for driving games and a headset for talking to your teammates. But that's it. In order to have a truly realistic gaming experience, we need to be able to interact more physically with the game.
And that would be Star Trek's Holodeck! Okay, we're not there yet, but what about a VR headset, a DDR footpad, and some handheld devices to simulate weapons? Instead of pressing ASDW to move, you need to shuffle your feet on the DDR pad. Instead of pressing or or you point your handheld device in the direction and either swing it (blunt weapon) or pull the trigger. And the rumble-pad technology could be implemented into a body suit so vibrate at the location you would get hit/shot/run over/etc.
but im too drunk, so i will just limit myself to a vent on The Sims...
:)
It seems to me that the market for The Sims is the same market for the people who watch reality shows like Big Brother. i.e. people without lives of their own.
I've got a friend (female) who plays the sims and has virtual representations of everybody she knows. (which I find exceedingly creepy). But she is married to the most boring bloke in the world (0 friends, which is pretty exception for a guy who used to be a bar manager and plays in a weekend soccer team) and now hardly goes out (whereas she used to be a good laugh. usual story, hitting 30 picks first guy who doesnt jerk her about)
This is just the technological version of buying some small yappy dog then spoiling them like a child and dressing them up in stupid sailor outfits.
Whenever she starts talking about it (how amazingly x is getting friendly with y) I just want to shout 'what the **** has happened to you?'
oh well.. you might have guessed I have issues there
Which is a good thing for story based games. It means you can break down a story into finite parts that a computer can manipulate. I forsee AI taking a new role in games 5-8 years from now, where the AI as director manages drama, pacing, and difficuly. This will be critical in story based adventures and online games. Why online? Because the worlds are either too big to help give average joe six-pack players direction (Everquest ect.) or are too limited in playable roles (Unreal Tournament, etc..). AI Directors can fill in gaps to drive a story around a player, ideally making every player feel crucial.
That said, 5-8 years is a long time in game terms. Expect a lull in sales of big budget games 'til then.
Anm
it seems that only things that sell these days are sports games that offer barely anything different from its predecessor, and the more ultra-violent than the last one vice city types of games. There are only a handful of games that i actually own for the three "next-gen" consoles, but there are dozens and dozens of old NES and Super NES games on my shelf that I still play to this day. The fact remains that i still get more enjoyment out of these games then i get from the newer, prettier games that are out now. I agree with the article, i think that as the twenty-somethings get older and the younger kids wise up nobody will care how many things your next console can do.
"Damn TV, you've ruined my imagination, just like you've ruined my ability to -- to, um...uh...oh well."
- Storyline. How did the Final Fantasy series get successful? Probably not because of its graphics (FF6 and earlier)
- Online Multiplayer gaming: why it should be dying? And whats that stat about 96 millions consoles sold anyway (RTFA)? We don't care, I know consoles makers aint making a dime when selling a console. The real deal (profit) is in games. I dont play consoles (except if PC is considered as a console?), but I only play online multiplayer games on my PC, and anything offline is really boring IMO. What the author missed here is about human competition. You can't code that. There is too much possibilities out there, too much way of playing a game, you can't copy a human's thought into some code.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Second, my PC setup, and as a result my emu setup is ported to a TV via S-Video out.
Third, I own gravis gamepad pros and real n64 controllers linked to the usb ports via adaptoids. Since I only emulate NES, SNES, N64, and Playstation, my controllers are all accurate. I LOVE the fact that I can remap my controls when I emulate. Or use a different controller. Or save whenever I want. Or make infinite saves. Or etc.
Finally, as I said above, the reason I own so many controllers is so I CAN play with friends. Games of Smash Brothers are not uncommon here.
Oh, and before you go bitching about how much I might have saved by just getting the console, I don't emulate to save money. On the contrary. I lose money and time doing it all legally. But once it's all set up, I see it as a superior gaming experience for the above said reasons.
The reason I don't want to buy a gamecube isn't because I'm cheap, it's because I can't remap my controls, or make infinite saves, or save in spots I'm not "supposed to", and many other reasons. All a console is anyway is a computer. I already have three of those. No need to buy another. And besides. Like any other, sometimes emulation can be a challenge. And challenge is fun.
I don't expect the entire world to accept my quirky philosophy of platform unification; it's a hobby, like any other. But next time you want to take a cheap shot against emulation, learn more about it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!