Slashdot Mirror
The Videogame Industry is Broken
GameDaily is running an interesting opinion piece running down the ways in which the gaming industry is just broken. The author cites soaring costs, huge risks, a reduction in creativity, and a stagnation in market growth as just some of the signs of this crisis. From the article: "The next-gen systems require publishers to place very large bets with each title. This will mean decreased risk taking and just regurgitated sequels of big brand franchises. How many publishers will take risks with multiplatform original IP? This is clearly not good news for the consumer as innovation has driven our industry from the beginning. The irony is that the amazing tools, capabilities and quality of the new systems may very well doom what is most important, which is the game itself. Reconciling what a creative team wants and what the executive suite needs in terms of profits will be a growing challenge for many companies."
Set up EA the bomb.
Maybe the new creativity might start showing through that?
Cheers,
Ian
It's not so much that it's broken; it's that game developers keep hashing the same games out over and over with different themes and newer graphic engines. I haven't bought a new game in almost 2 years because everything is the same.
-Kinsey
that another video game will ever be produced for a console with graphics on the same level as that experienced by NES games, and that people will buy it?
Also, I find it odd how many video games based on movies are coming out at the sacrifice of both gameplay and plot in order to cash in on the franchise. You'd think they'd have learned from the E.T. video game, but apparently the better graphics have changed that? Why must a book usually be made into a movie before a video game is based on it?
The game industry has always been cyclical and probably always will be. Every 12 years or so there will be a "great meltdown", "implosion within", or "game recession", etc. Time to buy dot-com stock instead :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Right now, at this very minute, Nintendo and the DS are demonstrating that it's innovation, not licenses or technology, that is selling software, and first and thrid parties on DS are benefitting. The same thing is happening on PSP -- look at Loco Roco's appeal and sales overseas.
The next-gen systems face some challenges, but no more than they ever have. As games move into a more mature phase of their existance, we have positives -- almost everyone under 30 has played games, and most continue to play games -- and negatives -- the percentage of people who buy new games just becuase their new isn't growing; instead most people are looking at the quality of the game itself before they plop down their sheckels.
The actual article is more reasoned than the Slashdot recap, but honestly, games don't face any more challenges than movies, TV, or any other media. Innovation is alive and well. Innovation doesn't have to mean better graphics or experimental gameplay. Look at Xbox Live Arcade, and Sony's and Nintendo's forthcoming online services. That's a HUGE innovation in the console space, and it enables new types of games on consoles that we simply wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Bottom line, the biggest problem with the game industry today, to me, are the jaded pundits, not anything else.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
If this was posted in the last generation of video game systems, I'd probably agree, but not with the Wii just around the corner...
You've all seen games.yahoo.com. A lot of the games there are priced at $20, which for the simplistic and fun nature of the games is the right price.
Yes, I'm guessing the hard core video game market is suffering, but that doesn't mean the video game industry as a whole is suffering. I bet Yahoo is making a killing on these games, as are the independant little game studios producing them. Or how about the cell phone game market? They're definetly not suffering.
Do we really need epic $60-100 games? Or do these $20 games satisfy, both the kids and the wallet? It's just a changing of the video game landscape. Those game companies who adapt will reap the rewards. It's not suprising really, is it?
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Hey, there's a mistake in the summary - this is good for the consumeres.
Finally the industry is discovering that making a sequel of a sequel of some old game is not a receipe for success. Of course Fallout N will sell good like hell. But at the end some companies will die. But most importantly a few other companies will succesfully create a new franchise, that will be good. And will have not only graphics, but the storyline. It's competition guys. Competition is always good for consumers, and bad for companies that fail to innovate.
That makes me think that they do not compete with themselves but with the hardware. Kinda funny if you asked me.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Every new console cycle we get the same deluge.
Rising costs!
Graphics/technology too important - bring back the good old days where gamers cared about gameplay!
It's like the holiday decorations that are left in a box up in the attic and brought down and dusted off once a year. I've read enough of these inane rants to feel like there has to be some sort of DIY form online somewhere where an author just has to fill in the new gen's dates and names and dump the thing on a website and wait for the pagehits to come in.
Ultimately, the video game industry will correct itself through market selection.
If newer systems with fancier graphics and capabilities require more development time and cost, development houses will take fewer risks and innovation will suffer. Those systems will eventually die out in the market as people lose interest.
But if other newer systems come along and don't require more development time or cost due to smart development tools and SDK/platform, the development houses won't have to avoid taking risks and innovation will still thrive. Those systems will succeed whereas the ones costly to develop for will not.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The industry is trying to move to a higher price point. And that's just not going to happen.
It's quite possible that the Xbox 360 and PS3, and their games, will sell slowly at their higher price points, and won't go mainstream until the prices come down, which could take years. The PS2 is still outselling the XBox 360. Microsoft caught up with demand, and nobody cared.
What I find facinating is how companies change the way they do things when they get popular. They forget what made them popular in the first place. My company is a prime example. We we extremely successful and thus bought by a huge company. The first thing they did is change the way we did things... not realizing that the reason they bought us in the first place is that we were already doing things right. Very strange indeed.
As for the video game industry, I see a trend of going back to the basics with respects to gameplay. All this push to make super realistic movie like games is just not working yet.
http://religiousfreaks.com/multiplatform original IP
The real risk and reward comes from SINGLE-platform ventures. This way you get to make the absolute best game for the platform you've chosen. You use its performance hardware, user interface, network connections, etc to the best of your ability.
With all this multiplatform crap going around, we're stuck with the lowest common denominator in all our games.
Basically this was an anti-console rant by a PC gamer who's sick of shallow PC ports of console games that suck because they were made assuming you didn't have a mouse and keyboard.
Wasn't this thing same they were saying when the video game industry was making the transition to the PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube and GameBoy Advance? (BTW, the PC is dead, dead, and dead!) When I was working at Infogrames (now Atari), the fad back then was for the publishers to release versions of the same title for all the platforms. Talk about crapware flooding the market. I don't think that will work this time around as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are going in such different directions that the publishers are in a panic that the tried and true strategy of shoving product into the channels isn't going to cut it this time. Not only is the video game industry is broken, the marketing people may... actually... have... to... WORK!
It's funny that these opinion pieces continue to crop up, where all they do is criticize what is wrong with the industry. Sure there are tons of sequels, certain games are going to cost more in the future, and there are plenty of other far from pleasant possibilities on the horizon, but there can be plenty of positives too. However, most magazines would rather A) focus on Big Game Franchise X cover stories, and B) complain instead of showcasing things that are interesting.
At the end of the day, magazines and web sites are conduits to much of the game info that is out there, thusly helping to shape a lot of its readers' tastes, as well as often indirectly instilling interest in new areas of gaming. On the rare occasion, there'll be an interesting bit in a mag or on a site that focuses on aspects of the industry that could rejuvenate, or at least provide an acceptable alternative to, what this op-ed chastizes, but often times these mags simply don't go that route.
One could argue that they do this because they are just giving their readers what they want, but if readers aren't exposed to obscure game / trend X, how do they know if they want it or not in the first place?
The specs are what really are going to kill the gaming industry. A one and half year old computer is no longer good if you want to play some of the newer games. And the major nuissance is when the package says Windows XP only. I might have become a senile old fart, but what exactly is it that you can do on Windows XP and can't do on Windows 2000 when it comes to gaming (well, obviously play Windows XP only games, but that's not the answer I'm looking for)?
Some members of the industry are trying to move to a higher price point. Nintendo's Wii is expected to have a launch price similar to the company's previous consoles, and the games will be priced accordingly.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Yes, the industry is "broken" because games get larger and larger and require huge budgets and thousands of man hours to complete...so the little guys are shut out because they can't compete or lack said budgets and the pubs don't want to take a risk...blah blah blah...
With the next generation development costs are increasing rapidly
So go develop a DS game or something for the XBox Live Arcade that's fun and original, and then you can get your funding, FFS. If you really have something insanely fun and interesting then you'll have no problem getting backing for it. Do it on a smaller scale and watch the doors open for the bigger deals. What the hell is an unproven "independent" trying to accomplish by making a $20 million game, anyway? Prove that you're worth the money and publishers will make sure your game gets to market...it's not like they don't fund all sorts of crap that sells anyway (see any of the Matrix franchise games for examples of this).
Growing the market - Where will the growth come from? Will the size of the hardcore audience suddenly double and triple or do we need the broad base of the mainstream to grow the business? The answer is obvious and so far the winners seem to be Microsoft with Xbox Live Arcade and possibly Nintendo with its easy to use and enjoy Wii games.
Again, sigh....this guys has answered his own damn question.
...it's heading the way of the movie industry and the music industry then? Lack of imagination, repatitive themes, form over function, soaring production costs and focus on brand rather than content... sounds familiar?
If you look at it that way, then it's not surprising. Although that said, the recent bedroom musician/indie film producer model means that we'll hopefully see a more gung-ho type of do-it-yourself game writing in the future.
Once DNF ships it will usher in a new dawn of originality.
oh, once it ships... ffs!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
...the more they remain the same.
t o.html
http://pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.html
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifes
food for thought...and nutritious food at that.
Just another reason PC gaming was always better, is better, and will always be better. Sure, you have worry about compatibility, even in the DirectX age, but by and large the 'system' remains the same for a very long time. Not to mention the games are always better here anyway. Last console I owned was the Super Nintendo, and it will always be the last one I ever owned. Consoles are uninteresting to me, and the games are almost always sub-par because of the restrictions the consoles face.
...much closer!
Graphics cards are faster, stronger and more powerful than ever. Some years ago when Virtual Reality
where introduced - it lagged BIG time, it was however revolutionary - all the rage...and only
the worlds hottest shopping-malls got it back then, but it quickly died because the games where simple
and very boring except for the virtual reality immersion.
The technology for virtual reality just wasn't there yet, but behold...we're THERE NOW!
Just take a look at your own pc's gfx cards with their 1680 x 1050 resolution for your widescreen that
you can't see the pixels on more (from a meters distance) anyway... imagine two of these cards
and two seriously high-res mini OLED displays in your glasses and we're in business.
Virtual reality online gaming also needed the bandwith - and it's only recently we've
gotten this.
The technology is dirt cheap too! Mobile cell phones already come with high-res Oled displays
and you could create higher-res oled displays fit for "VR-Glasses" already...heck...they even
exist today in 800 x 600...even higher if I'm not entirely mistaken. And they're NOT expensive.
So get cracking! Take a chance - make the VR games right now!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Just like Disney does with movies? *
(Once video games became big business, the "big players" have tried running operations like a generic entertainment industry offering)
* Disney just announced it slashes new releases to 8 per year.
As a small games developer with big idea's, this is great stuff. It's not especially new information though, it's been obvious for a while.
The problem is that the major companies are in an arms race. None of them dare innovate massivelly in case it causes losses that upset shareholders, right now they have a stable, if stale, market, and their shareholders do like stability. I have no shareholders to worry about.
I can't afford the kinds of graphics they can, but I see no evidence that this money they have is helping. Was C&C generals really all that good? Nope, a small increment that looked a bit prettier, and while I hate to critisize the creators of Doom 1 and 2, ID software proved with Doom 3 that fabulous graphics do not equal a great game.
What we need is some fresh idea's, something to wow us and crete the industry anew. I'm trying to play my part, a small and mean part, but we all have to start somewhere.
You mean, games are like every other art form ever developed? Most authors follow the patterns that predecessors have created, but every so often someone with a spark of genius creates something new? What a revelation!
As far as gamedev articles posted to Slashdot go, this one is the first one in years where the author actually has a clue what they're talking about. Many people in the industry have been making similar points for a couple of years now, myself included. One of the points ("increased risk means decreased creativity") has been valid much longer, and is the primary reason for the current consolidation trend -- big companies trying to hedge their bets and spread the risk amongst as many projects and studios as possible. This is inextricably tied to the following myth: throwing 200 monkeys on a project means it'll ship in 12 months. That's what [insert large company that shall remain unnamed] does, and it's a trend that will not suistain itself, simply because technology is evolving even faster than their employee turnover rate. In other words, grabbing fifteen senior monkeys out of 200 and making them implement global illumination is just not feasible, while the shop down the street with a team of 30 and five superstar programmers will have the tech. More importantly, the current state of the art is in enough flux that the production pipeline changes drastically as we progress; the word "designer" means a very different thing now than it did five years ago; the term "technical artist" is relatively new, etc. It's very difficult to implement those changes in a giant production team -- especially considering the sheer number of suits that a team of that size requires, and their reluctance to rock the boat.
Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic about this, in the sense that the industry is way past due for a major overhaul, and that won't happen until it's painfully obvious to everyone involved that the current model is not feasible.
-goltrpoat
I really want Namco Museum on the XBOX 1080 /endsarcasm
This is self correcting. Either small companies or enterprising product managers in large companies will take advantage of the high cost low play quality games and will offer a lower cost option that plays great or people will quit upgrading, some companies will go out of business, and the games will correct towards playability. All of this assumes that playability is what everyone wants... although it seems that the Wii, X-Box 360, PS3, etc. aren't actually emphasizing the playability of the games that much and nobody is saying... "Ah schucks, I just loving playing on my PS1 so much and the games are just so playable I don't need to upgrade."
But hey, I don't write for a game magazine or anything so what do I know.
The game industry is not all that broken. It's simply stratifying, and if anything, there are wonderful new opportunities that game developers never had before. To be a console developer on the PS/2, for example, you had to ship a retail title. This is a huge investment, because there is a cost of goods, a large licensing fee to Sony, there is a cost to rent shelf space, and there is a cost to marketing to let people to know to go to the tsore. However, on the Xbox 360, you can download games, and if they're self-funded, you get a huge percentage of the back-end directly from Microsoft. There is no cost of goods, you don't have to market them because people can play the demos for free, and there are already several examples of games that almost instantly made back their investments. Geometry Wars is said to have recouped in 6 days from launch. The typical ratio of people who buy a game to people who play a demo on Xbox360 Live Arcade is a whopping 20%. Compare this to under 3% on the PC, and you can see why this is a really big development.
Sony and Nintendo are expected to launch similar services for the PS/3 and Wii. With all this downloading action, the barrier for entry to be a next-gen console developer is going to be lower than ever. This is really important, because indie games used to be relegated to the PC. This sucked, because you have this massive compatibility headache, and you had marketing issues trying to reach your crowd. On the console, you just have a single, high-performance architecture and a captive audience that wants only to play games, not to browse the web, download porn, read slashdot- just play games.
Downloadable games are also a terribly honest way to make a game. If the demo isn't so fun that the player wants more at the end of his 60 minute or N-level trial, then he won't buy the rest. So you have to make the game fun first.
If you believe the common wisdom that all you can do with GPU cycles is render things, and that therefore you must have to make these expensive next-gen art assets, then yes, everything will cost more, and everyone will suffer. If, on the other hand, you simply look at the Xbox360 GPU as 48 specialized processors running at 500MHz and another 3 general purpose processors, each with dual cores, running at 3.2GHz, then what you really have is an assload of compute bandwidth with which to simulate whatever you want.
At E3, Havok was demonstrating their physics engine running on the nVidia 7800. It was an impressive demonstration. You are going to see advanced physics simulations open up a whole to world of possibilities for gameplay mechanics.
No, it's not easy to write optimized code for this stuff, but it's also really easy to get something up and running and to begin iterating on optimizations.
Claims that the game industry is broken are badly exagerated. It is certainly getting harder to be one of the top tier game developers, and those that are finding themselves in the middle ground are feeling the squeeze, but this is the natural outcome of most growing, hit-driven markets. If you're in that middle ground and starting to whine instead of adapting, then you're going to go out of business.
...by putting out more interesting, fun games than the big shops. Currently my favorite game is Mount&Blade, which was begun by a husband and wife team.
Modern games are expensive to make. Music is cheap to make.
Also:
Music preference is strongly effected by promotion.
Gaming preference is weakly effected by promotion.
I see this as an inevitable, unavoidable future that we have brought on ourselves.
We wanted our hobby (gaming) to become successful, widespread and more mainstream, but, in that happening, more people, and thusly, more money become involved. Due to that, we get bigger publishers with bigger monetary risks and less willingness to take risk on new IP's, un-fomulaic games and so on.
Unless the industry were to collapse upon itself and become "indie" and "uncool" again, this whole situation is simply going to get worse.
It's reminiscent of how Hollywood got huge and decided to start churning out idiotic sequels and any movie by Michael Bay. Eventually something will come along and shake up the system, but it's going to be a long time in coming, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
I seem to remember a little title for the SNES called Chrono Trigger, which was released at the humble price of eighty dollars. Eleven years ago!! Just one example illustrating that expensive games are no new thing. As for consoles, does anybody remember the cost for SegaCD or Saturn when they came out? I bet it was more than my two cents. :-P
I don't see who can teach imagination or innovation.
The games all look the same.
Let's shoot with hi-tech assault weapon, magic power, futuristic blasting spear, yada-yada-yada.
Death To Games.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
based on my limited iq....but here goes.
1. Stories suck. they suck big time.
2. Eye candy bullshit. oh...very nice, pretty, sexy, textures, blah blah blah. I played with ega 16 colour games that were more fun and had better frame rates.
3. Look at 2. Look at how obsessive gamers are with "appearance".
4. some games have NO story. just shoot, kill, or something else. might as well play tic tac toe with a cat.
5. game managers do NOT care about the game. game managers don't even Play games. some game managers HATE computer games.
Really good idea to put these people in charge of making a game. NOT.
6. programmers that do not care about games. just another paycheque. you can tell who programs good games and who doesn't by the final product.
thats my $0.02 have a nice day.
Really? That doesn't sound right to me. I guess there were no sequels before now.
First of all, the game industry is trying to sell essentially the same games over and over, with a new twist here or a new gadget there (to use a fitting Simpsons quote: "But with a new hat"), but the game stays the same. What's the big difference between Quake III and IV? What's the selling statement to convince me to buy NHL 2006 when I have NHL 2005?
Earlier "sequels" were different games. Not only new graphics. Diablo II was a completely different beast than its prequel. Yes, both had the hack-n-slash element, but II offered a LOT more variety and a lot more gameplay. Settlers IV was vastly different from the first three games and was definitly "something new". Let's drape the shroud of blissful ignorance over part V...
This is, of course, already the reason why studios do that: Changing the gameplay is an inherent risk. But this risk they have to take if they don't want us to finally figure out that we keep buying the same game over and over.
Review papers and pages lose credibility, because too many of them allowed themselves to be bought by publishers, directly or indirectly, to grant them good reviews for shoddy games. Of course, they don't want to lose the advertising money, and who would put an ad in a game magazine, if not game studios?
Another problem: Game ideas get patented. Sure, studios want to protect their development. But what would've happened if the core idea of Tetris (blocks falling from above and vanish if a certain condition is met) would have been patented? A lot of very entertaining games would never have existed. And we're steering towards this problem.
Games are also a "luxury" good. You buy them if you have the money left, but it's one of the first things you cut back on when spending money becomes scarce.
This all adds up to it, and that all has to be taken into account. It's not that games "get worse" or that gamers don't want to spend as much money on their games, or that games get pirated more today than earlier (actually, with the amount of online content and online multiplayer in today's games, the pirating is actually in decline).
It's a combination of problems, and all of them would have to be addressed if we were to solve it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and lets not even go talking about EA and their current state of unaffairs.... but personally, I think delivering lots of bugs into BF2 is a great way to make people want to switch to BF 2145 when that comes out.
Lately I've played a wide variety of titles with plenty of innovation - Odyssey: Winds of Athena, Wik and the Fable of Souls, and the incredible Eets. Alien Hominid started life as a Flash game and transitioned to the consoles. Darwinia was made by a team of three, proving that a full-size commercial game can still be made even if you don't happen to have a mega-buck budget. With the reported low cost of a Wii devkit, Xbox Arcade and the Wii's purported download system, there's still room for plenty of expansion and innovation at all levels of the game business. Sure, the companies with the mega-buck budgets will probably still choose to spend those budgets on well-known franchises, and will probably grind some of those franchises and companies into the ground because nobody's taking risks. I suspect that if every game company in the world went out of business tomorrow, there'd still be a bunch of people sitting coding by themselves or with a few mates because they've got an idea for a game they've just *got* to get out of their heads. Flash is the new Spectrum 48K...
and we want our story back. Then at least we would have one story to turn into a movie.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This is why the Wii will take the lead in sales with the coming generation of consoles. The development kit is cheap and rather than companies spending millions on pushing graphics to the max they are more focused on game design. The console is also signifficantly cheaper than Sony and Micosofts offerings so game companies could sell more.
Just what the hell are things like Katamari, Loco Roco and Guitar Hero then?
There will always be some games that have a crappy story but what I think is really killing the game industry is the poor programming job that many of the game companies do. I just got Half-Life 2: Episode I and for some reason if I want to load any saved game auto or quick save the game will refuse to load it and crash. This really sux since the game crashes all the time during normal game play. I cannt get through an hour of game play without it crashing im giving up on the game no more value games for me. Companies should let other comanies that know to code games(like idsoftware) do the engine and just focus on content.
Games will never dissappear. Even bald french starship captains like a good game now and again!
I don't want to play another WW2 FPS. No matter what side I can play. For most popular games, they seem to go nuts with sequels that add little to the game play. Specialy with racing games which I play when I can find one with proper physics, which are rare. There were one game that I didn't buy because it was protected with Starforce.
I did like the latest Halflife 2 release although it was a bit short. It didn't bring any new ground braking gameplay, but for me it is more about the story line, and I would like to see more of them. I see it more as a interactive book so if only they can come up with a good script, I will be more of them.
Some games seems hard to re-invent. I have played Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 & 2 a lot, but as every other game, they had to go 3D with number 3 because you can't make bitmap games today. But that kinda killed the gameplay for me, I bought it but ended up just playing RT2 again.
For starters, I don't read many reviews any more because I don't buy computer magazines any more. In the UK, most computer magazines seem to "magically" have the same cover price of around £6.00 - on the basis of mounting a cover CD or DVD that holds demos & patches that I can download myself; not that I ever play demos anyway because otherwise I'd be deinstalling as quickly as I'm installing and screwing up Windows XP in the process. I regularly read Gamespot reviews for PC and Gamecube games but when I look through their "All Time Best Games" tables for both formats, modern games rarely appear in those tables.
Going on from that, because I care more about gameplay than graphics, I buy PC budget games and visit eBay or the local games shop to buy used Gamecube titles - simply because I am not paying full price for a game that throws pretty in game animations at me but little gameplay. Now I can pick up more than enough good games for either format for around £5 apiece, I'm happy waiting for a year or two - especially with PC games where they've been patched enough after that time to actually be playable.
Furthermore, the games industry is obsessed with 3D graphics to the point where some excellent titles have become unplayable dross when transferred from sprites to 3D graphics. Heroes Of Might & Magic is an excellent example of this - a superb strategy game up until HOMM3, then came 3D graphics in HOMM4 and the interface started to feel slow and cumbersome, now in HOMM5 the 3D graphics are fully in there (yes, you can even step into each battle you fight) but it's appalingly bloated. The same has been true for C&C
As for FPS games, Half-Life is probably the best game I've ever played but I've never touched Half-Life 2 because I'm not giving Valve the honour of installing their Steam spyware on my PC - I don't care how good the game is. Besides, Counterstrike & Unreal Tournament 2004 have given me hundreds of hours of fun and still continue to do so.
So, all-in-all, I've a large *totally legal* games collection that I'm still working my way through on the PC and Gamecube plus I can also emulate Amigas, Megadrives & N64s on my PC so I can also have fun with retrogaming and mess around with a whole heap of free games in Windows or Linux also - so why would I *want* to go back into the endless hardware upgrade loop just to play a few new games that each cost £30-£40?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There's obviously going to be good games and not so good games, but the biggest problem is the increasing demand of super graphics. My impressions tell me that previous reviews focused a lot more on the story, playability and addictiveness of a game. Now it seems like reviewers take on the graphics more and more, as if it was a necessity. I find it sad that it's - as far as I can tell - impossible to get a top score with mediocre graphics. I'm not saying that graphics aren't important, but I do think that the importance of graphics has been ramped up recently.
My take on the situation is rather obvious. Video cards are getting seriously powerful and realism in games is only a decade away or so. Yes, it's obviously a stunning experience to play the most visually appealing games but that's only a couple of hours of excitement and it goes away, quickly. I still play StarCraft, despite the fact that it looks like crap and only supports 256 colors. Fact is, it has the playability. It has the story and it does have the addictive features. If such game was released today but with perhaps a higher resolution and more colors, without improving much beyond that, it would require far less resources and obviously less personell. It could still be a hit and I doubt anyone in here can prove me wrong on that point. Point is, to create a super pixelated game with the latest and best stuff, you need more developers but that will only add little to the last hours, days, weeks and (hopefully) months you're spending.
There is a solution, however. Games have become more complex and it is almost impossible to create a game that would generate some interest with the work of only a handful of people. Nowadays that number is more likely 30-50, sometimes even twice, three times or even four times as much. Therefore, the only way of making a game more profitable and less risky would be to slash the amount of developers who are working on a game title. This could be done if developers started exchanging technology and graphics. A lot of code and graphics can be reused in many other games and altered only a little without risking repetitiveness. Think about it: great-looking grass is always grass and a wooden crate is always a wooden crate. Just change the colors of it, add different shapes. We don't need artists to redo all that stuff over and over again. Instead, recycle what's still good and create games that last (read: story, playability and addictiveness).
Full Tilt
There are some simple things to do that can fix the industry
Voices: First get rid of all the actors and actresses doing voice work, nobody else cares if Alec Balwin is doing the voice of bobo the clown in Flaming Death Racer 2k6, so why should the publisher.
Visuals: Get rid of the lame ass cinematics that delay the games for a year. Most everyone skips after the first time and many dont watch at all. If you really need a cinematic intro or cut scene render it in game and show off your ai skills rather than trying to make us drool over graphics that we wish were in the actual gameplay. If we need more background give us a text screen to read or throw in the manual, if thats not enough to explain things perhaps your story is half baked and needs to develop a little more before you make a whole game out of it.
Packing and Paper: Speaking of manuals, put that on the disk, text, pdf who cares just searchable and handy...save a tree. On the subject of saving trees, why not just ship games in a dvd style case and be done with it.
Game Licenses: A kids movie hitting the theaters is not enough of a reason to shove a bunch of money at a "license" to create a crappy game based on it. History has shown that most of the worst games in history have been based on movies, its not hard to see the trends. Licenses trap and restrain a game to stay within the boundries of something that has already been created. Look at Star Wars, there are tons of bad Star Wars game with only a handful of good one, the best being based on Lego's. Bottom line is if you are going to use a license think outside the box.
You want to really know what broke the game industry, its the idiots in the movie business thinking they could run the games business like movies and television, sorry to disappoint but in games its not the voice talent or number of explosions that the star its the fun level of the game. Get rid of the crap and bring back the fun and games will succeed, heck they might even end up profitable AND affordable...a win-win for everyone.
Is smaller companies CAN compete. Nobody said it was easy, but then nobody said it was supposed to be. On the PC market we see a small but thriving indy games scene. As the most successful receant example see Galactic Civilizations 2. It is the game Master of Orion 3 should have been, and because of that it's sold quite well (if you don't have it, get a copy, it's well worht it). You also discover, when you persue these Stardock people, that they've got a little system set up where you can buy a bunch of other indy games easily, you just pay and downlaod through their little tool. More research will show they aren't the only place doing this. Ok so you don't tend to see them on Walmart shelves (other than Gciv2) but that doesn't mean they aren't out there making money.
Consoles are harder, but even then, it happens. See Marble Blast Ultra for the X-box 360. Marble Blast is just a little "roll the ball through mazes" 3D game for the PC/Mac from Garage Games (another site you can get multiple indy games off of). However it is enough fun that MS decided it would make a good game for X-box Arcade and thus we now have Marble Blast Ultra.
Are people becomming mega-millionaires off of this? No, but then I don't think that's the only measure of success. I think if you can make a game that people like to play, and make money doing it, you've succeded. Apparantly that can be done indy, despite the current game market.
People pretend that it is the big bad corporate bosses in the Game/Music industries that force the products to be boring repetitive drivel, because of sheer malice. The reality of course is that they provide what people want. Otherwise they wouldn't sell anything. All this howling and moaning should be aimed at how boring and staid your typical person is- not at how good corporations are at taking advantage of people's lack of imagination.
I love video games, but I feel that the video game industry has always been in jeopardy. It's just the nature of the business. When video games first came out, nobody cared, and nobody would buy. Atari struggled to make a system that would sell. They're systems were good at the time, and realistically, the evolution of Atari consoles has matched, shockingly close, to what we see today.
The consoles grew in speed and in power, and often, they were backwards compatible with older games. Later, during the 16-Bit wars, Atari came out with the Jaguar sporting a sexy 64-Bit path. At the same time the 3DO was developed which was a 32-Bit system. Both failed because the memory required was just too much at the time. Today, such systems would be cheaper. The games for these systems were actually a lot of fun.
32-Bit machines consistently failed in the console world. The Sega 32X, which was an add-on to the Sega Genesis, was a flop. The Virtual Boy (which sounds kind of homoerotic) was a flop. These systems went the same path the Atari systems went. They struggled, and they flopped.
Sega, sadly, continued the same path that Atari went. Their Sega Saturn, a 64-Bit machine, flopped, and so did the Dream Cast. The Dream Cast was particularily advanced considering all the innovations. In fact, GoldStar 3DO was riddled with neat innovations (it was nightmarishly expensive, like the new systems of today) and it too flopped, like all 3DOs.
The video game industry has always seen a horrible market. Systems might succeed. Every new generation, the companies jam more innovations and improve the overall experience, but people have proven to be so fickle. Expensive games won't succeed, yet, games with poor graphics won't succeed. A game with excellent graphics and at a low price won't succeed if the game play is just sorry. The margin, it seems, is very low. This is nothing new, it's always been this way. Maybe it will change, but failure plagues the console market.
The availability of online services for all three next-gen titles will help ramp up creativity. If the companies are smart, they can release "mini" dev kits, and liscense content for cheap (or free!) online distribution. It would be great to see would-be developers crank out a level for a potential game (probably with dumbed-down graphics and no voice acting/SFX) and let people play it and see if they would be interested in playing more. If so, then they have more of a reason to continue with this original idea and put out a full fledged game. Or, for smaller developers, make a longer, better game, stick it on the online portion of a console(s), and if it sells well then they can go on to make a full game with industry backing.
The Wii itself is going to be helping the little guy. While we can expect a plethora of FPS and Lightsaber games (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease), the dev kit for the Wii is a mere $2000! This means that a group of friends (or another small, interested party) who really want to get into this can pool their money and get some capitol from a rich uncle to start creating something.
Once a market becomes dominated by a few big players, it stops being innovative. Look at the kind of services we would have gotten if AOL and Compuserve had continued to dominate on-line services. Or look at what Microsoft has done to the PC industry.
Fortunately, the gaming industry won't stay this way: with graphics hardware and tool prices coming down, more and more people will be able to enter the industry again, and there is little reason why a single company should be able to dominate it, like Microsoft did with operating systems. Xbox 360 and PS/3 are just speedbumps.
A crisis is brewing in the middle east as lebanon and Israel renew hostilities. A crisis is what's happening in darfur. A crisis is the shit that's going on in our own federal government that's screwing over the common man and giving the wealth more and more money.
The computer gaming industry collapsing because of it's own inability to innovate? I hardly call that a crisis.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
There are 2 problems, and a couple of ways to help solve them:
1) political/economic - the major game studies are organized like movie production firms, which isn't good.
Hollywood also is stuck with 'blockbuster' syndrome.
The cost of making game increases with team size, so make the team smaller and more focused.
Gaming platforms aren't as easy to develop for as vanilla PCs, but if you focused on reusable components, basic playability and user interface first, it would be far cheaper to get innovative new titles out there.
2) proprietary IP (intellectual property) always loses - you share, or you recreate the same wheel 10 times.
Sony used to sell a Linux kit for the PS2 - you could use it to create your own games, but other users could only run them IF THEY HAD A Linux kit as well! What's the point? You want to encourage people to create games
they can burn to DVD and Distribute! Maybe not the highest-quality games, but games nonetheless.
This only helps your platform. [Yes, I'm aware of the economic model of giving away hardware and making it up in software)
Solutions
A) Distribute lots of content variety at lower prices - create feedback loops w/ customers!
I remember a time of monthly CD-ROM subscriptions, which combined content from multiple providers.
(This was before the net made it easy to distribute new content by setting up your own website)
Instead of Xbox Live, you could subscribe to a 'mail stream' of games and other media content, either
available online or distributed via 'enhanced' DVD (DVD-Video + DVD-ROM)
The user gets to decide how they want it, and the video parts of the DVD could be
usable without the console/PC).
DVD limits it to PC, Mac, and PS2 & Xbox consoles (sorry Nintendo, unless the Wii has DVD).
B) Think conservatively - people aren't going to update their hardware every 3 years.
So unless you make your game available on older gear (PS2/Xbox), you're giving up too easily
(and probably have chosen the wrong architecture, if you're that tied to a platform)
A game should play as well on my 2000-vintage PS2 as it does a 2006 Xbox 360.
Yeah, "stagnation in market growth..."
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Making me pay to join an on line gaming sever is not the answer when the game is no better than off-line. While playing against a real person on the other end can be entertaining, it for sure is not worth the fees charged.
And then there is the sequel because they haven't yet sucked out enough money on some hit game is not the answer.
What the gaming industry is experiencing is no more and no less the same as that of the video media. There is so much drivel and mind bogglingly inane stuff on the tube you can tell it was only created just to fill time. But then, that always happens when big business get involved.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
So the video game industry has sunk into the same hole as Hollywood. Surprise. Risks become high, the bean counters come in and do great short term work by completely selling out the long term. Smart money leaves early.
hundred million dollar movie dvd cost: $10-20; entertainment value, hopefully 1-2 hours
ten million dollar game dvd cost: $40-50; entertainment value, hopefully a few hours at least
When we used to play games in arcades, they were the best entertainment ROI. Good player could make a single quarter last hours. In the 90's, that all changed to $1 for 5-10 minutes making it close to the worst entertainment ROI. And arcades died immediately. Like movie theaters are now.
I'm not really clear about why console machines and games exist.
It seems that console games exceed PC games sales -- that much is sensible.
But I wonder why the trend exists to develop games for a fragmentary market, like the console market, when the PC market is pretty well standardized.
When you develop for a fragmented market of course you will run into all kinds of problems. Technical problems, creative problems associated with the technical, and by degrees money problems.
Though I know little of the details of the gaming industry, I have to wonder how it's reached this state. Is it true that game authors must also pay large licensing fees to console manufacturers, in addition to all the other costs they incur when developing?
Why would they do this when a standardized platform exists that requires no licensing fees (the PC)? Why would they do this when that standardized platform offers all the capabilities, and much more capabilities, than a given console? In doing so, how does that help them be more innovative? Or does the innovation come mostly only from the console manufacturers who create specialized, limited and sometimes optimized hardware?
Is there a terrible price difference between purchasing a console instead of a PC, particularly when you consider the limited applications of a console, and the expandability and flexibility of a PC?
Or has the game authoring industry "bought in" to the console manufacturer's competitions amongst each other, at great cost to themselves?
If innovation is the goal, why would you choose to create upon something defined in scope by others, and more limited than other possibilities?
If money is the goal, it does not seem surprising they face the problems they now do.
Biggest sack of crap I've heard of. Innovation happens quite often in games, and the only people who dare say that the industry only pumps out 'the same titles over and over' are those who don't understand how the entertainment system works. A music analogy was made before, about this article: The music industry is the current entertainment giant moneymaker. The main places to make cash in it pump out the same crap over and over- Gangsta Rap that focuses on the glamour, not the reality, pop stars who strip to sell records, and rock bands that use gimmicky riffs and lots of macho yelling, will always be a great place to make money. Does that mean its the best? No, of course not. Hence why there is a large indie scene, and why salsa music is still seen in Tower Records- people do buy it, just not in the large quantities of the other stuff. Sure, back in the day every developer tried to do something new...oh, wait. No, they never did. Developers have copied and copied to make money since the inception of the medium, its just that their getting better at it now to the point that at least when they copy, its still entertaining- and who is to say thats bad? Digressing, also note that much like the music industry, the games industry houses a very resourceful and powerful indie scene, that grows more every year- large independant works making it onto Steam is particularly encouraging thing(as they will all be seen by the millions amassed who play CS and CS:S until the sun arises the next day), and many of the larger development studios seem to be taking risks in places that they usually wouldn't. The large commercial success of more artistic titles, like Shadow of the Collossus, is occuring more often. And in the future, games like Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, and the entire existence of the Wii console(which people keep forgetting about, despite the fact that the average American has even been alerted to this new type of gaming system soon coming out on the market) almost ensure that innovation is not something that will be forgotten just because there is money to be made. Game Developers still make games- I don't know any suits just yet who know how to program, or know anything about art. I'm pretty sure were working just fine. :P
Every summer the same tired shit is rolled out by the press which has little to cover, and much to harp about. It's called "writer earning a paycheck time" again. This time it's particularly accute because it's a platform swapping year (or two) and transitions mean developers in the middle of a 2 year cycle. The video game industry was broken just before GTA3, just before Quake III, just before Doom (really broken before Doom because the Jaguar was on the skids, the 3do was a flop, and NEC's offering was going down in flames etc), just before Zelda & Mario 64 - anyone noticing a trend here?
Just like console cycles, the industry has it's creative cycles as well. Then some dev group or a new band of kids throws something on a new hardware platform and it's OMG "they're turning our kids into zombies" and "evercrack is taking over the world". And for those lamenting sequals, um - that's what Nintendo's been banking on for the last 26 years as far as Mario and Link are concerned. For every Nintendogs there's also a new metroid pinball. Surprise surprise. News flash! Dirt is brown! Water is Wet! - put that baby in 50pt Helvetica and slap it on the cover of the June issue.
My next prediction? Watch this November when the same salaried press-fuckers will be touting gaming's new "renaissance". NOW whose being jaded?
ME! You don't have to be a former member of a press-club to spew this rant - but it HELPS.
(it also helps to try to imagine the writer quitting smoking while typing this)
Mmm here is a message for EA and other huge gaming houses. At the large LAN we run locally we let users play the games they want for the thirty hours gaming or so it goes for. This LAN followed a trend we've been noticing for awhile: people are jack of rubbish no content games with flashy graphics. All of the users this time mostly played aoe2 and tremulous (tremulous.net - open source) and a small amount of call of duty.
How damn pathetic that after years these games still get play time (not that I'm not a fan of them myself), we should be onto far more creative and fun games these days! This is a broken industry so fix it.
I ate your fish.
The game I've played most recently is the MMORPG Guild Wars. And it has a lot of game balance and sophistication that can only be maintained via Software-as-a-Service style tweaks. Meanwhile, when I think of the things I don't like about it (e.g., less characterization and story than Morrowind or the KOTOR games), they do NOT seem to be products of the SaaS technological approach. Rather, they are just game design choices (the forced-teamplay community aspect of Guild Wars works for combat adventures and nothing else).
Casual gaming, from what I can tell (I'm not totally clear on what the boundaries of the category are) also has a strong SaaS aspect. Maybe SaaS is just winning as the preferred game platform approach?
This would certainly be consistent with what Bill Gates seemed to be saying in the article. And by the way, in the >20 years since I first met him, that kind of grand, no-particular-details platform vision is the kind of thing he's been consistently right about.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
Sega was the first to use the microphone as a gameplay device The Famicom uses microphones in its controls First fishing rod controller Zapper, Power Glove, Super Scope, DK Bongos; 'fancy' input devices First Analog triggers First analogue stick in a control pad First console online (Genesis) The NES was online in Japan First Online console RPG Zelda was online on the Famicom .
Is there a terrible price difference between purchasing a console instead of a PC,
The answer is yes.
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Logout
An article like this could have been written about every year since 1999. Big deal, while the big players develop themselves into oblivion self publishers and garage game developers are doing great things regardless. Who cares what the big publishers do? F**k 'em.
I really don't know if things have ever really changed all that much. I honestly feel that things have always been largely the same. Consider for example the Nintendo (NES) era. There were a lot of 2D platformers that were essentially side-scrollers with the same basic principle. The only difference being the sprites and a few animations.
Everything has largely been the same throughout history. Someone finds something that resonates with consumers and everyone else seeks to cash in on it be creating simple knock-offs. We still have endless sequals (how many Mario Bros. games were there on the NES or Sonic games were there on the Genesis), a large number of games based on movies or other franchises (Yo Noid, Total Recall, and endless others), and many other of the same problems that exist today. The only difference between today and yesteryear is that we look back with the sense of nogistalgia and fail to see the same glaring problems that rear their ugly head today.
Eventually you have to come to the realization that everything is simply and spin on a spin on a spin. For example, several people suggest that the DS game Trauma Center is a good example of a new and innovative example of what the gaming industry can produce. Funny that I remember playing a board game called Operation when I was young. There are a lot of differences, I'm sure, but you're still playing doctor. I haven't been on this planet long enough to know what Operation is a spin on, but I'm sure there's something. With a planet as old as ours it's almost inconceivable that there are still original ideas outside of recent discoveries by humanity. That joke about the nun and the rabii, I'm pretty sure there was something equivalent to it 200 years ago that was based off another joke that preceded it by another 200 years.
I'm not entirely sure if I buy the article, or at least everything it has to say. Some of the points it makes should have been obvious from the conception of video games. If they weren't whoever didn't realize it shouldn't necessarily have been in the business to begin with.
1. Perception, Games as Media - Games have always been a medium, regardless of what some people might think. Much in the same way that you can convey a story through a movie, book, play, or other art form you can do the same with a video game with the exception that a video game is more interactive. In some ways this makes it both superior and inferior to other art forms, but I think most people would place video games under that catagory of entertainment along with movies, books, etc. They are things which are used to occupy time and naturally compete with any other leisure activity.
2. Upside Down Metrics - Personally, I feel that the same arguments used with video games apply in other fields as well. Do people honestly believe that every movie is profitable? Every book? How about any other form of art for that matter? In one sense, perhaps rising costs will ensure that only well made games are created so that no one has to worry about buying a sub par game (after all, of the sever hundred, if not thousands of games made for a given console, how many does the average consumer own? a handful, a few dozen at best perhaps?), but perhaps this will only lead to the so-called "safe" games that people seem to storm off about. Of course if one were to consider all "video games" one must also consider simple flash games or other games that are every bit as popular as console games, but made for a fraction of the price.
3. Increased Risk Means Decreased Creativity - Despite what the media may tout as fact, I tend to disagree. While it might be popular sentiment that there is not more creativity in the video game industry, I must beg to differ. As an example, I would suggest Will Wright's Spore. Although it could be consider a logical progession from Sim City and other games he has had a hand in creating, I believe it transcends almost anything I have experienced (Although many would point out it is a spin on several other game
I looked to much forward to the XBox 360 but it simply failed to impress me. Same old same old. Just better graphics apperently but that is lost on me. What is not lost on me are the increased game proces and even worse the huge game load times making me long for the good old Nintendo game cartidges.
As long as companies insist to create artificial business plans they will suffer the consequences. Game consoles are sold below cost just so they can start making money on the games. Therefore you need to be authorised to develop for the particular console and of course only those with deep pockets get the chance to do so.
At the same time console makers build in restrictions to stop small third party developers from creating content since it won't benefit the console maker. Effectively killing the number of titles that can be made available.
At this very point in time, the console maker who is price conscious and sensible about their console will be able to sell it at or above cost is going to be the winner. Simply because they can afford to leave the platform open to third party developers and thus create a very lively user community around it.
Typically this means simpler technology, lower development cost and easier access for new developers. Yeah I know, it sounds like Nintendo Wii doesn't it! Can't wait to start lauging.
The only game I'm wanting for is Unreal 2007.
And yet, they refused to add in motorcycle dirt bikes into the game.
Think back to the Second Charlie's Angle movie with the motorcycle combat sequence - that would work great in Unreal Tournament 2007.
One could even do stunts and races within Unreal - and that would be great!
But No, I guess in the future, motorbikes have vanished from the minds of man.
Big corporations pumping out video games lack the creativity that
once was found in games like PARADROID and WASTELAND.
http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/nes/peri pherals/fcmodem.html s sories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-famicom-acce
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
Again, so console centric. Maybe people aren't getting bored with games after 3 months of play. I'm still playing BF2 after a year, and it is still just as fun as day one.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
"The technology for virtual reality just wasn't there yet, but behold...we're THERE NOW!"
Oh the technology is here. (look at the examples).* And there's competition.
*Especially the 'circuit board' one.
here is a writer who is one of the growing number of players who have "played everything" and see the current outlook for games and their companies future to be dismal. As the old gamer population starts looking back at gaming history, they start saying such historical lines such as: "Remember how simple 'Missle Command' or good ole 'Pong' was?" or even "Games back then was much cheaper then it is today... games these days are going to kill themselves like Sega did..." excluding the fact that they really aren't that much different as when N64 first came out [the first Star Wars game on N64 was $75 including tax]
Now I look at that article and see a man who has nothing left to look forward to. I think I read the same type of article when N64, Ps1, and Dreamcast was in a three way battle. N64 had expensive games and Dreamcast and Ps1 were like the Wii and the 360 today...
A little heads up for the writer to that article: Not every game requires x million dollars to produce and market. There is a potential for the big companies [who usually make crappy games *looks at EA*] to produce games of great gameplay and replay value under a low budget.
One way to kill the Hollywood mindset of regurgitating sequels for a safe bet because of compromise of innovation to hedge bets against huge development costs, is to open console games up to user modification. This is going to HAVE to happen for consoles; it has been propping up the PC game market a considerable more than some developers might be willing to admit.
Mods and Cheats need to be built in to console games.
The difficult thing, is to convince financiers wanting to 'own' a franchise, that this is the healthiest way to continue.
One way they might be convinced, is in merely rereleasing previous game in a new souped up, more flexible and editable engine. A bit less investment on their part. Unfortunately, this is too much like just pumping out sequels, and remakes, could be considered worse.
My typical game purchasing pattern: Buy new console; read of a few interesting games that never are released, suffer the lack in variety as the same safe blockbuster titles are regurgitated.
It's gonna sort itself out as all industries do. Wait and see, the public won't buy the re-chewed crap games and they'll be forced to change. www.richestpersononline.com
How many craptastic sequels to games that sucked initially did it take to realize this?
The cool thing is, companies still come out with anything good at all:
SAN ANDREAS!
And more importantly:
http://www.sa-mp.com/
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
In each industry, which entity do you think is to blame for the generic corporate schlock that's on the store shelves?
The video game 'snob' articles are getting redundant. So is comparing Video Games to movies or music when it comes to sequals. Most movie sequals don't live up to the originals. Games however *do* tend to get better as more sequals are made. For example, compare the original Unreal to Unreal Tournament. I'm not just talking about graphics here either, the gameplay of video game sequals are often better then the originals. Look at how many sequals were made to street fighter before they started going dowhill. The second Mortal Kombat was better than the first. Super Mario Brothers was much better than the original.
As for the amout of games of the same genre out there, the reason for that is simply that they sell. I'm looking forward to the next FPS, the MMO that is better than World of Warcraft, etc. The reason there aren't 100 clones of Katamari Damacy out there is because people WANT FPS games, MMO's, etc, etc. Unlike movies, games aren't all about stories. While people complain about genres being saturated, this is often a good thing. Look at the FPS world...should we have just stopped at Quake because Unreal Tournament and Halo were basically the 'same thing'?
If the video game industry is 'so broken' and so in need of innovation, then go hire a few developers and make a revolutionary game. The makers of GTA did it, and if the industry is as broken as the slashbots claim, they should be able to also.
I stopped readin TFA. Why? Because it's what's being said every year. Sure, the industry has a problem: it got too big, too fast. It has great technology, but unimaginative software. We know that already.
So, while I don't want to flame the author of TFA, I wonder why he tries to point the obvious out to the consumer. If anyone should play repetitive, braincellmurdering videoentertainement for the sake of a good storyline and great gameplay, it should be publishers, slick marketeers, editors ánd entire - rather meek to say the least - developement studio's.
There actually was a modem for NES in US, but it never took off. Can be said that it was unlicensed too (while the famicom one was offical). Google for "Teleplay".
I had this discussion at a game developers meeting, and it went like this. I claimed, in essence, games are art, and should be made properly and to reflect the artits vision (paraphrasing, but you get the drift).
Some game developers, said that "art doesnt make money" (again paraphrasing), and that being profitable is more important.
Some applauded me. I think you see the problem here: If you're not spending time to make great games because of the need for money - or you're only making the game for money - quality will suffer. If this gets repeated by every dev house in the industry, you start the downward spiral. I'm of the oppinion that if you make a great game, your audience doesn't know how to tell yours from say, the n64 superman. Is it because gaming is overly marketing drivin? Is it because the industry has dug the hole where innovation and originality cease to be driving factors? Prolly a little of everything. Thi is why gamers are so entranced by the wii - it would seem it could break some of the bad treands.
Someoen also mentioned about flash/java games. Why are they so popular? Quick, simple, little cost. Honestly, a lot of flash games, simple as can be, have the same depth as a lot of $50 games. Wheres the value proposition in that? I think less games, of higher quality, with an effort to re-educate the gaming masses, especially on the front of better greaphics to not a good game make, could keep the gaming industry from completly turning off at the least the more hardcore market.
Here's the bottom line: how many bleh games have you played, that if they had just a bit more dev time could have been awesome? Well, this problem is only going to get worse as costs go up, and it's probably up there with just plain bad game design of why a game cant be better then mediocer.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
Theres a boom and bust in the game industry every decade. Old timers remember this, especially with Atari. New hardware and software create booms, over-production of similar games and creative ruts lead to busts. Its hard to say what part of the cycle we are on now.
One downside to offering a dev kit for $2000 is that, as you stated, anyone can create a game. While this will result in some very good and inovative games being developed it will result in more absolute worthless titles. IGN or some other game site had a list of the 100 worst games ever and it was suprising to see how many of them were old Atari games. Thanks to the cheap entry and ease of programming anyone could make some lame knock off. This is what led to the Atari downfall and the rise of Nintendo with its Seal of Quality. If there is to be a cheap dev kit, Nintendo will still have to protect the image it has earned over the last two decades by ensuring a Seal of Quality.
the whole reason why this is happening is because all the game programmers are busy playing WORLD OF WARCRAFT. They dont have much time on their own to come up with new ideas and actually write games.
I think it was Nintendo that predicted that the gaming industry would implode unless people tired something new and it appears that this generation it may well do so.
What's the obsession with first person shooters?! Dear God, please give us something else to play. Where are all the Locorocos, Icos, and Katamaris?! Why are gamers having Prey, Halo and other cookie cut FPSs constantly shoved down their throats?
With the higher price points and repetitive seen-it-before gameplay casual gamers will leave gaming faster than rats off a sinking ship. Unless the industry provides more games like Sing Star, Buzz and Guitar Hero and less Halo I doubt gaming will be as profittable in 5 years time as it has been up until now.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Read this article "Death to the Games Industry" in "The Escapist".
I think he's overly pessimistic and his solutions aren't novel (what he proposes as a solution is already happening, and all we're seeing is the games industry stratifying into blockbuster, arthouse, and indie streams like the movie industry), but he does articulate a lot of what's wrong with the industry.
Lets have a look at these awesome points.
1. Um how so, music, DVDs, they all deal with there 'product' in the same way because it is a 'product'. They are wrestling for entertainment time but how is that different to just about any competition. You make a good product itll sell well doesnt matter if its media or cardboard boxes. The whole point about building communities has been taken on board since Dizzy on the spectrum. Any series of games builds a community around it and the companies have been milking that for years.
2. This is another problem that has been around since very old machines like the NES every generation boosts the cost of games production cause technology moves faster than programming skills. This isnt broken yet and likely never will be the industry is already adapting with cheap alternatives like the live games, backward compatibility, and the Revolution as a whole.
3. The myth of no inovation. How often is a brand new genre of music or film discovered. Not often. These things typically happen over a period of time in increments so you go back to earlier action films and you have relatively fixed shots, then the shots start shaking and cutting faster, then slow motion, visual effects huge amounts of CG. There wasnt a single film that took a vast step. That stopped happening decades ago. Movie industry is still here still coming out with new things and there is far far more risk with a movie costing anything up to a couple of hundred million to make in comparison to games.
Games tend to innovate in exactly the same way. FPS's will have some new graphic effect, or weapon, or slow motion ala Max Payne. Small relatively safe leaps and you can see them happening even with expensive games today. (See Prey, Oblivion, Battle for middle Earth 2 on 360 etc etc.)
Of course im not saying innovation is wrong, innovation is necessary and important but its not the be all and end all. Serious Sam and Painkiller are two of my best games ever made for the PC they are pretty much rip offs of Doom made nearly a decade before them. Im sure more or less every gamer can say the same about some of there favorite games.
4. Um your lying now arnt you. X-Box 360 games adjusted for inflation are in fact no more expensive than any previous generations. Release price of early megadrive games ranged from 40 to 50 dollars. Release price of 360 games ranges from 50 to 60 dollars more than a decade later. Adjust for inflation based on an average inflation of 2% (I believe itd actually be more but for the sake of argument.) 40 to 50 from 1995 would be roughly 49 to 61. So yeah. Utter rubbish. The only people claiming games are gonna be more pricey is Sony and they are likely just going to reduce the price anyway.
This isnt even mentioning that there are already bargain bins with some of the games and budget games. Games are probably too expensive but its not new and therefore not really the cause of any break down of the industry.
5. No market can expand indefinately but the industry is already beginning to rope in new users. The article answers its own problem. Nintendo are appealing to a wider audience, MS has opened up live, Sony appears to be trying to do absolutely everything ever. (According to there marketing a gajillion times better than everyone else. We'll see Sony. We'll see.) So where exactly is the break here?
Infact where is the break anywhere in this article. Half the points are age old problems the industry has dealt with for years. Other than that there are non problems and problems that are already being dealt with. This is just the usual nonsense that pops up typically after an article has just proven completely different. (25% games sales rise on the same slashdot page as this article claiming the industry is horribly broken. Thats the kind of breaking I want to see happen to my earnings.)
Negativity sells more copy and attracts more attention. Once in a very long while you'll see a story that actually has journalistic merit appear on a gaming website. The rest of the time it's reviews (some dude plays a game and tells us what he thinks about it), previews (the developers jerk off onto the page), rumors (the publishers leaked a tidbit of info to raise awareness of a game), and this kind of editorializing (look ma, we're real journalists, down with teh oppressive game developars!!!).
The pundits in discussion are reporting on the front-end of an entertainment industry. There's interesting things to be said, but it's not about how many googleflops the PS3 is pushing or its pricetag. It's about the actual inner working of the companies and what drives them to do what they do. This information is harder to get. It's easier to just keep spouting random opinions and "reporting" information that reads like (and probably is) a press release.
The gaming media used to be worthwhile for publishing screenies and giving some review information. Today it's easier just to go to the game's official site for screenies and movies, and I usually find user reviews just as enlightening as the official publication reviews. They're the ones that are quickly becoming obsolete, and heming and hawing about the industry's woes is a part of their death throes.
I'm pretty sure the Wii is actually targeted at 720p, so even on larger screens it should still look really good.
I'm not sure how much cheaper it will really be todevelop for though in the artistic sense though, as even today modelers are working with models that have a lot more polygons than the consoles can handle. Lower resolutions just mean less work for engine designers, not nessicarily laid back artistic staff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley