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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..
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
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.
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
It has a lot of bearing on the conversation. The game industry is diving right in the crapper because the suits play it safe by releasing cookie cutter games year after year. How much longer do you think people are going to put up with Madden 200X, GTA random city, and all the other regurgitated crap that keeps getting shoved in our faces? I guess with enough people like you the industry might sustain itself for a few more years. I mean you can't help it, you don't know any better. A few third party devs, Nintendo, and indie devs are really the only ones pushing the industry in a positive direction.
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.
I'm guessing 2010.