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Gaming Industry Going Down?
Stefan Constantinescu wrote to mention an Inquirer article positing that the gaming industry is due for another crash. From the article: "Sadly, the gaming industry is in a self-imposed death spiral. Everyone is putting on a brave face, touting the latest v6 of a game that came out before most of it's audience was born. What was a fun hobby full of creative geniuses and their mad art has become a grey corporate parking lot. We are about to take that dive again, the industry is desperately trying to speed up the process with each passing day. Rather than take a step back, they are addicted to marketing plans and money men. It will kill them, and in a few years, good will arise from the ashes. It happened with arcades, it happened with the first wave of consoles, and is about to happen again. It is high time someone flushed the toilet that the games industry has become, it will do us all a world of good."
I cant remember a time that I've had MORE games on my system than today. The industry seems to be doing fine, although I will admit the signal to noise ratio does seem to be going up..
I'm not so sure these days. Games seem to be eating Hollywood's lunch, which is bad for theaters, and small development houses grow merge and die off but that's the norm. There's nothing which would indicate a full blown game crash like the 1983 Atari debacle.
{ - Generic Guy - }
From TFA: How many games are not sequels, fight games, drivers, or FPSes? Few. Just like Hollywood (to which the games industry is endlessly compared) the suits control the expenditure and they lack not only the vision but also the cajones to do anything but look backwards and extrapolate from there. If and when there is a correction the next breed/ style of games will come through.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
I guess it's a valid thing to talk about, but look at where we are right now: Video games are actually semi-cool now - they're no longer limited to a nerd's basement, more people are buying games than ever before, and gaming is actually competing with Hollywood. Movies are boilerplate also, and nobody is preaching the impending doom of that industry.
Also the fact that games are becoming cookie-cutter has no bearing on this conversation. If you think that gaming is getting stale now, remember not THAT much has changed since the original Doom.
I work in the industry, and I can tell you that this article hits the nail on the head. You see so much more marketting now than every before because the corporate money men want to get their cash and run, and let the developers take the fall when it all comes down. I love capitalism!
I consider the game industry PC, Consoles, and hand helds. PC games like world of Warcraft have strong Sales. Consoles like the new xbox360 has sold well. Hand helds like the Nintendo DS has sold well. I don't see any signs that things are heading toward a downward spiral. What I will say is it takes large budgets to make most modern games, this may balloon up and explode at some point, but I don't think it will crash the industry, it will just force game developers to be more innovative, and hopefully end the yearly updates and releases of games that arn't much diffferent from the previous years and games (EA sports and MMORPG's as examples).
The decline of the gaming industry is because "big media" has gotten involved. They choose the concept (or sequel, or license), then run it through accounting to see if it fits their return on investment requirements. During development, if they suddenly have a concern over quarterly earnings per share, it may be more attractive for them to cut the game off, toss out the staff, and report minutely better earnings.
It's simply quantity (or eye-candy) over quality, just like television. How many reality shows are there, and how long have most halfway thinking adults been entirely through with that theme?
Good shows are really rare, and as we know, some great shows get cut after one episode if the numbers don't show immediately.
Even pimps run better business than big media.
Two games a few years ago that really stood out (and had huge sales, and even huger income/cost ratios) were Re-volt and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Both games were innovative, fun, and even pretty. But they didn't have million dollar rendered movie cut scenes, any advertizing, or big public rollouts.
The one upside to the downside in the game industry is that it forces some of us to re-enter the real world. There are plenty of fun things to do there.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Crappy games are going to kill the games industry at about the same time that rampant and fervent misuse of the comma kills the Inquirer. And don't get me started about "it's".
Seriously though, I don't think games are any worse (or better) now than they were five years ago. There's still cool, original stuff and there are still sequels. Plenty of games are still fun.
Game Company Database
Arcades were a big thing in my city 10 years ago. But, one day, we noticed that all the new "Hot" games that were being released cost 2 quarters to play. Many of us would ponder, is it worth paying more for a game that I know nothing about, only to die in less than 5 minutes? It started to spiral down from there. Now there are no arcades at all in my city, and you'll only find a handful of arcade machines at the big movie theatres. Even there the cheapest game cost 6 quarters (the most expensive needing 16 quarters) to play... i wonder why I never see anyone playing the games.
I could care less what quality an arcade machine has over consoles, i don't care how much it cost for the store / movie theatre / arcade to purchase the machine. Keep arcade games at only one quarter per play, people will play often at such a cheap rate, like they did in the past. You would certainly make alot more money that way than off the odd person that likes to spend 4 bucks for 5 minutes of disappointment.
You'd think it would have dawned on all the arcade owners as to why people just stopped coming to their arcades so many years ago.
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
"Is the apocalypse nigh? I sure think so. The last one happened at the height of Atari's power, they were invincible, pumping out hit after hit. Pac-Man, ET, Asteroids, movie tie-ins, overflowing arcades and a rabid fan base. They were in the spotlight of the mainstream press, songs making the top 10, and money coming out of their ears. What could go wrong?"
TFA is missing a couple key differences.
(1) Video games are not a nascent market, like they were with the 2600. The biggest market for video games has been playing them their entire life, and have the purchasing power to keep the industry afloat.
(2) PCs and consoles are more ubiquitous in the American home today. The potential market is larger.
I believe that the video game market will not crash. It may not be able to continue in its present form, with tons of high-stakes gambling on low-risk ventures, but the money will be there for the taking... but the terms of competition may change.
If I were a big-time game dev CEO (Ryan, you listening?), I'd be looking at creating an engine that could be used to create many games of different genres & styles... then I'd save on dev costs and be able to focus on content & gameplay. And, be able to license the engine for a long tail.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Of course, who cares what this guy thinks? That's probably why he's so bitter... it's bad enough he's been working his whole life to become a writer, now suddenly his opinion is worth about as much as some dude on blog*.com...
I'll pay attention when more articles like this start originating from developers, project managers, and game industry execs. Oh, and when whole-dollar-sales of video games start to dip. Call me when all of that happens. Until then, can we ignore crackpots ? That'd be nice. Thanks.
As a consumer nestled well within the target demographic for the industry, I have to say I've bought less games this year than ever before.
Admittedly, it's due in part to the glut of games out there. There's a LOT of games coming out weekly, and scant few are worth spending the money on. The last games I've bought myself are Shadow of the Colossus (my god, what a GREAT game), Burnout Legends (basically BO3 on the PSP), Burnout Revenge (mediocre improvements on 3), and that last Incredible Hulk game (lots of destruction, but who's still playing it?). There have been a huge swath of first person shooters out on the PC, action/adventure games on the console, as well as platformers (what are they up to now, Ratchet & Clank XIII?). But most make small improvements (at best) on existing games.
I'm also a fan of MMOs, and as such am more inclined to play ONE game for a much longer period of time than a game I can finish in a weekend.
I've been watching the next gen consoles with great interest, but to be honest none of the launch titles for the 360 really do much for me. I'm not a fan of sports games, which are the very embodiment of what is wrong with the gaming industry, and I can get Call of Duty 2 on the PC for CHEAPER than the 360. Project Gotham Racing 3 looks nice, but I have like three Gran Turismo games kicking around on my PS2. So what's the incentive?
Graphics? Ok things are looking much nicer, but there's no innovative gameplay out there anymore. The last really impressive console game was Colossus, and that's an "old generation" game.
It might be too early to tell. First batches of games for new console generations usually are the suck, until developers start getting ballsy with the hardware. But I'm hoping the industry doesn't bottom out before then.
Just my opinion.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
If only we could all rip on the games industry as well as this guy does. There was a time when i would have agreed with him, and so would penny arcade (those were good days, good days...) But anyway, I've come to see the games industry the same way i see every creative industry. It's gotten to be large, and innovative. There are many differnt people trying to differnt things differnt ways. Of course, there will be better years, and worse years, knock-offs, blockbusters, trend games, and endless merchandising. But, in the end, these things are natural for this type of industry.
There's not a shadow of doubt that 8-figure-and-rising development costs per game are utterly unsustainable. The question is, what can be done about it?
The market volume is there, the demand for games is unquenchable, the platforms are in very good shape and gettting better, so the only problem is actually MAKING the products without spending gazillions. And that problem boils down to one (and ONLY one) issue: manpower.
People will immediately object that game assets and development infrastructure cost a lot more than manpower, but my point here is that those things are only *symptoms* of the current problem and not central. You see, game assets only have astronomic price tags when you're licensing a blockbuster title from its blood-sucking owner (and we don't need any more of those), otherwise the cost of assets is simply that of the manpower and computer time needed to create them.
So, here's the most obvious and straightforward solution to the malaise in the gaming industry: knock down the cathedrals of the current games producers, and put game component and game asset development out to tender in the bazaar of the worldwide development community.
Manpower costs would then fall drastically owing to the huge supply of computing skills in the world, and even the machinery costs would plummet since much of it would be personally owned by the distributed developers. Furthermore, this addresses the other two contributory issues that I didn't mention above, lack of reuse in the industry and very little standing on the shoulders of giants. FOSS has a proven track record in that area.
Of course, this doesn't tackle the whole problem, but it certainly rips out its rotting heart. And freed from the shackles of megabuck production costs and the time-to-market issues that they create, I have no doubt that novelty in games will start to flourish again. There is no shortage of amazing ideas in the world.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Mostly curmudgeony grousing on the article's part, but obviously there's a fair amount of truth in there: the games industry mostly sucks. Or, as a wise fellow once said, 90% of anything is crud.
I don't think a crash is imminent, because we have a different pricing model than we had in the 80s.
Back then, a 2600 game would typically cost $30, unless it was a "hot" title from Atari themselves, in which case it was $40 or $50. Most of the Atari titles did not disappoint, but zillions of third party developers jumped in with horrendous garbage that made the buyer want to shed tears for having been forced to view such a pitiful excuse for gameplay on his television. I think if I'd paid $30 for Mythicon's "Sorcerer" I'd be very unlikely to ever buy another game. Trying out games at kiosks is something only kids have time for.
Nowadays, games (and all technology) come down in price pretty predictably. After a year, a game is $20. ($30 if it's really popular.) After two years, it's $15 or less. After three years, it's in bargain bins, unless it's been sent back to the distributor's warehouse.
I routinely wait two years before getting most games. Maybe that's because I play a lot of single-player and not much multiplayer, so I don't have to worry about whether I'll be able to find a server. For a long time I knew hardly anyone who did the same thing, but I'm starting to encounter increasing numbers of people who practice the same buying strategy.
This is the market in action. Most games suck, and they're not worth $50. I know it. Others have been stung enough that they're starting to notice it. I don't think the gaming industry is in for a crash; I think it's in for a fall. I think starting sometime in the next few years, most games will be $20 or less when they hit the shelves. If that doesn't pay the bills for the extravagant graphics and movie licensing... too bad, guess they should have spent more of that money on gameplay. If "Tetris" didn't teach the lesson that a great game doesn't need great graphics, I don't know what will.
Which brings up another point: true occasional revitalization of the industry comes from true innovations like Tetris. A game concept that's completely unlike anything else. A genre unto itself. Those things are very hard to come up with, obviously, but they do still happen. I think the gaming industry would have fallen a long time ago if Tetris hadn't injected a whole new genre into it. In the 80s, most developers were trying to come up with a new genre; now it's rare but it does still happen once in a while.
Oh, and Charlie... it's the Atari 7800, not the Atari 7200.
The Internet is full. Go away.
Thank you. Finally someone agrees with me on this.
People say, "Oh, well it was home consoles that killed arcades." Bullshit. That may have been a contributer, but it was mainly the fact that it now costs you a 75 cents a play for a game to kill you in under 2 minutes often times. Some arcades like Dave and Busters in st. louis are even worse.
When I look at the arcade today, I see two types of games. Games like tekken, where it costs 50 cents to play, and if you play against someone else, you will get about 1 minute 30 seconds enjoyment out of it. Then on the other side I see soul calibre. In one player mode, it is very common to see people play upwards of 10 or 15 minutes. Guess which one gets played?
They basically got greedy. Really greedy, and now it is a dead business.
As I see it, if the gaming industry became filled with moneymen and fewer creative geniuses...
Film, TV, Music... its all the same.
There are only about 1, maybe 2 good films in a year also... but we don't use the
scarcity of quality to predict the downfall of cinema.
The gaming industry is doing fine. On a revenue basis, it grows every year. End of story.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The game industry coming to a crash may be true. But it won't be because people dislike having so many sequels or licensed products. Having so many sequels is more of a symptom then a cause. The cause that I see could cause the game industry to fall a bit is money and time.
Games are getting more and more expensive to make. More technologies are required. More people are needed, development times are increasing and now the people making games are even demanding to be treated like people and get time off. Marketing for games is getting exponentially more expensive to reach the larger target audiences. Security for game is increasing to combat against piracy. Also games are requiring additional continuing costs for server maintenance and patch work. That is a lot of money necessary to make a game work in today's market.
To combat these increasing costs game companies have been trying quite a few things. Prices of games are rising, adding advertisements to games brings in some revenue, and sequels and licensed products guarantee a certain amount of return revenue. But everything the game industry does to increase the return of a game just is not keeping up with the pace of the cost increase to create a game.
Eventually game companies just won't be able to keep up and will have to close down. When enough of the companies shut down a lot of the previously mentioned costs will drop. Games will get simpler again, there will be less competition for marketing, technologies will get cheaper, and hopefully piracy will drop down when games get more affordable. When that happens small companies will be able to compete in the industry again and the industry will enter into another climb.
I really do hope it happens actually.
"Is the apocalypse nigh? I sure think so. The last one happened at the height of Atari's power, they were invincible, pumping out hit after hit. Pac-Man, ET, Asteroids, movie tie-ins, overflowing arcades and a rabid fan base."
The same Pac-Man that Atari was left with 5 million unsold cartridges for? The same E.T. that was so lamented that most of the copies of the cartridge came back and are now occupying landfill space in New Mexico? These aren't prime examples.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
If they'd stop pushing out buggy crap before it's finished just to meet a deadline maybe more of us would buy more games. As it is now I don't have a whole lot of time to play anymore and I need to be extra choosy about what I spend my money on. I'd rather not spend what I thought would be my first play session with a game just patching the damn thing.
Originality seems to be lacking too, developers (I'm looking at you EA) seem to want to stick to what they're sure will work. So we end up with GenericFPS2005 or GenericWWIIShooter or another iteration of [insert professional sports league] 200x. There really is a difference between older games and those that have been developed recently, it seems like the developers genuinely cared about their product back then instead of just meeting a deadline.
There's a reason I've ordered a GP2X (SHIP ALREADY DAMN YOU!) over a PSP.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
I know that they aren't near as popular as they once were but isn't it because the consoles can do things just as well as arcade games now? Arcades keep trying to adapt too. They've moved onto more specialized games that you can't recreate as well using a home console. I'm not an industry person, that's just how I see it.
Having worked at an arcade for a number of years and played in quite a few tournaments, I can tell you what killed the fighting game craze. Broadband internet connections. Every gamer I knew that was at the arcade all the time in the early to mid 90's plays some type of FPS, MMO, etc online. I don't think the consoles killed the arcades, look at how long the two co-existed. I think the ability to play with other people online is what killed competitive arcade gaming which is what the arcade industry was running on in the mid 90's.
Games like DDR with complex input devices that a casual fan won't build/order at home will always have their place in the arcades, but there is no reason to go and play street fighter in the arcades, when you can play it on your xbox, or kaillara (pc) at home.