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Cheer Up! Video Games Are In Great Shape
simoniker writes "Tired of doom and gloom from pundits predicting the sky falling on the video game industry? Long-time Gamasutra design columnist Ernest Adams offers up a contrary view in his new column, commenting: 'The industry may be as conservative as Pat Buchanan, and it may be going through a rocky transition between consoles right now, but video games are doing very well, thank you very much.' He goes on to make points such as 'The mass market is here', 'Games are getting easier to make thanks to inexpensive tools', and 'Game development education has arrived'."
Original, fun games have nothing to do with technology. It just requires creative people to make them. Snood and Tetris are classic examples.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I think Nintendo could do a lot here to help the current situation. As the article says, the market is finally here, and its in some ways easier to develop.
Nintendo is trying to force development costs down, while encouraging innovation, thats 2 things necessary to grow from this status-quo we are in right now.
Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
The video game industry hasn't been in trouble since the NES came out. There was that short lapse when people got tired of Pong, Atari, and Coleco-whatever, but past Nintendo... sorry. The chances of the video games industry going into a deep recession are absolutely zero. No, the millions of people playing MMORPG's, shockwave games, console games, and FPS games are not just going to up and vanish, nor will their numbers recede. Far from it; as great games with really good graphics become cheaper, and more available with more online content, we haven't even begun to see the limit of the industry. Not to mention the blinding speed at which gaming is growing in developing nations (remember all that Chinese legislation meant to keep people from playing long hours of online games, or the fanatacism of young koreans with MMORPGS and real time strategy?).
The only people that are facing real trouble are game pundits themselves, as the gaming journalism business is more or less a big farce. Yes, some of them do a good job and take themselves seriously, but a large majority are more than willing to take a little kick-back to give a game a good rating and decieve their readers.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Or am I missing something?
This doens't take into account the ever-increasing cost of game production. How can it be getting both easier and more expensive to produce games?
Surely if this were the case, we'd be seeing an exponential increase in quality? If we are, it's going right over my head (with a beautifully rendered motion blur, I might add).