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."

Comments

Same Thing... Different Day

[dufachi]

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.

Re:Same Thing... Different Day

[Simon Garlick]

Game industry = Music industry
Developers = Bands
Publishers = Record companies

In each industry, which entity do you think is to blame for the generic corporate schlock that's on the store shelves?

Re:Same Thing... Different Day

[jmp_nyc]

Exactly the same thing can be said of movies and Broadway shows.

In all of these cases, production costs have risen faster than the incomes of the target consumers. As that happens, investors are loathe to have a failure on their hands, so they take fewer risks. For a perfect example, after the successes of Lion King and The Producers, look at how many films turned into Broadway musicals. Do we really need a musical theater adaptation of The Wedding Singer? Innovation has moved off-off-Broadway, where costs are lower.
-JMP

wah wah wah

[iocat]

The only thing that's broken in the game industry is that magazines seem to have no other story list to draw from other than "videogames are broken."

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.

Re:wah wah wah

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

but honestly, games don't face any more challenges than movies, TV, or any other media.

Yes, and clearly, in TV and movies, we don't suffer from the regurgitation of proven material over and over and over again, with a focus on blockbusters in a vain pursuit of mega-profit....

Re:wah wah wah

[AK__64]

Bottom line, the biggest problem with the game industry today, to me, are the jaded pundits, not anything else.

So my question is, why are the pundits so jaded? Seems to me if everything is so rosy than the pundits would agree with your analysis.

I think there IS something broken about the gaming industry, I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think video games will be able to entertain the same number of people in the same way that they have been. I don't think the depth of experience is there to keep the same people involved while also reaching out to their kids.

Re:wah wah wah

[kfg]

I come at it from an industry perspective.

Yeah, I figured. :)

. . .it would make my job a lot easier!

You only build strength when your muscles are stressed.

I guess I meant that the overall number of hardcore gamers isn't growing

I would suggest that what is happening is that you are not seeing the hardcore gamers because, as per your own statement, it is the gamers who are jaded, not just the journalists. They are not buying your games, so you think they do not exist.

Build the game and they will come. The problem is that you have built an industry. Industry depends on production. Mass output. "Sofa sized" paintings. Games depend on creativity. Rarity. "Starry Night."

And so the industry is broken by design. It can be nothing else from the gamer's perspective.

We're looking for the artists.

KFG

Re:wah wah wah

[WhyCause]

What Nintendo does that is 'innovative' (I'll not argue that the specific definition really applies to what they do) is apply new (to videogames) technologies with the intent of changing how games are played and expanding the market. Three examples for reference:

• They took miniaturization and LCD technology and produced a handheld console line that still sells millions of systems annually.
• They took self-centering analog joysticks and put them into their controllers, providing the player a finer granularity of control. This has now become the industry-standard control input.
• They put bog-standard touch-screens into a handheld game system, making the control scheme accessible to anyone who has ever held a pen.

Note that none of these were bleeding-edge technology. It was all older tech applied in a different way (than what the games industry was doing at the time).

If all they had ever done was make the idea available for purchase (ala Microsoft and its tilt-sensing Sidewinder), or make software that required non-standard controllers, I expect that videogames might still be a niche market (at least in the US), and that Nintendo would have gone out of business ages ago. By virtue of being a console manufacturer, they can 'force' (e.g., TV out would have been totally antithetical to the concept of the GameBoy, and, technical issues aside, thus was not included) these new ideas on gamers and developers. By virtue of being a game developer, they lead the way in demonstrating how to effectively utilize these newly-applied technologies. Third party game developers look at writing software for new consoles, see the interesting things Nintendo is doing with the hardware, get ideas from seeing what Nintendo has done with software, and write games that really push the envelope in terms of what type of games are available.

Note, too, that most of the tech advances pushed by Nintendo have expanded the market: The GameBoy let you take games with you (now you need two consoles), and the DS's controls made games more appealing to the large numbers of people that had never really considered gaming. This is good for the long-term viability of video-gaming as a whole, and could, eventually, establish an entertainment medium like what we see with movies today: art-house films for the hardcore, and block-buster sequels for the everyman.

It is thus Nintendo's consistent aversion to stagnation that earns the label innovative. Of course, if there were no Nintendo, other companies would likely have made the same steps, but it may not have been a single company trying new things every generation, and the end result may have been very different from what we see today.

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[Z80a]

and dont forget that is cheaper to develop for Wii than X-box 360 and PS3 as you dont need to do really high resolution texture and super detailed models,or use rocket science programmers to deal with Cell :3

it's good.

[Janek Kozicki]

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.

The industry will fix itself

[c0d3h4x0r]

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.

The next generation consoles just cost too much

[Animats]

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.

Forgetting a next-gen console

[Exatron]

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.

So...

[Aphrika]

...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.

Correct.

[goltrpoat]

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

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post, but let's not assign credit in the wrong places. Bongos-as-controllers is a great idea, yes, but it's not innovative -- unless you think maracas-as-controllers is completely different. Sega hit on that idea with the fantastic "Samba de Amigo." (Which probably should have sold a million Dreamcasts if Sega's marketing division had noticed it and ramped up the hype machine a little more.)
  This is not to belittle Nintendo, though -- but they've got plenty of legitimate innovation going on without giving them credit for someone else's innovations. Do give them credit, however, for seeing a great idea and asking "how can we do that?" which is the complement to "innovation."

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wii is mentioned so often because Nintendo has built so much excitement around the system without adding a movie format of questionable value, pre-rendering movies of games and passing them off as real-time footage, or stealing the ideas of their competitors and passing them off as inovative while calling their cometitors gimmicky; all Nintendo has done is promise a new way to play existing games and (hopefully) new genres and games. Why this is so apealing to so many people is that most games have not really evolved all that much since the N64 was released; most FPS are still copying Half-Life, Counter Strike, Golden-eye or Unreal Tournament and passing it off as a new game.

Nintendo may (or may not) dominate the game industry for the next 5 years, but I am positive that they will have the most inovative and interesting games released on the Wii or Nintendo DS.

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[timeOday]

Whether it 'wins' is one thing, but it does look as if the Wii is going to get Nintendo a lot more attention this time.

It seems like the article - and your comment - are focused exclusively on consoles. If you want a game industry with lower costs, lower risks, and more creativity, why not just look elsewhere within the industry? Even though we own a PS2, my 7 year old spends more time on Flash and Java games, simply because there's an endless stream of new games coming out - and they're certainly not million-dollar titles. Even PC gaming, I think, has a more vibrant "indie" development scene than consoles. Don't get me wrong, consoles have largely taken over gaming and now occupy center stage. And like Hollywood movies, they're likely to remain targets for criticism about "the industry." But if those things really worry you, there are other options.

Re:As with everything else that's popular

[IANAAC]

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.

You don't mention what industry you're in, but buyouts rarely happen solely on the success of the company being purchased. Most likely it's simply your product that the parent company wants. Could be for IP purposes or to remove a competing product from the market.

Either way, and having been through a couple buyouts myself, the reason they changed the way you did things was to match their corporate culture, not the other way around.

Nintendos' Wii

[Data Link Layer]

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.

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[SteveXE]

You forget Sega, although they dont make consoles anymore they had alot of inovative ideas. The motion sensing controller, almost identical to the one Nintendo has made was done first on Dreamcast but never released. Samba Di Amigo was a game that used Maracas in the same way Donkey Konga uses drums. Sega was the first to use the microphone as a gameplay device First fishing rod controller First Analog triggers First console online (Genesis) First Online console RPG. The Wii is full of concepts dreamt up by Sega and hopefully perfected by Nintendo...best of both worlds if you ask me.

Gamers Are Sick & Tired Of Being Ripped Off

[pandrijeczko]

I really cannot remember the last time I actually bought a newly released game at full price within days or even weeks of its release. Why should I?

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 /Red Alert and whilst I love Warcraft II & Starcraft, I've never been near Warcraft III.

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?

Re:Gamers Are Sick & Tired Of Being Ripped Off

[Pzychotix]

Sad bit of work there.

Just because the graphics have updated you won't allow yourself to move up the gaming ladder? Warcraft III is a great game regardless of it's 3D nature. In fact it gains a bit through that since the MOD scene on it has much more leeway in what goes on in design, looks, and gameplay. Just look at some of the mods at battle.net, or even just the most popular one, DotA. These mods are well worth the money paid for the game, and learning to play the regular game itself is a good part too. Sad to hear that you won't play newer games just because they moved to 3-D.

And Valve - Steam being spyware? Where did you hear about this? Now you're just moving into craziness. I couldn't even find a single thing about spyware in steam through google. The only thing that could be considered spyware would be the hardware surveys that pop up like once a year. And that's obviously not spyware (since it asks you).

There's a limit on where to draw the line. You're just going crazy about it and instead of letting yourself try a couple new gems, you stick with the old hat stuff. Sure it may be good, but that doesn't mean everything new is crap.

Yes it is broken.

[Stumbles]

Which is why I have not played a video game for 3 years or more. There are only so many ways you can kill an alien, make gobs of tanks and over run your enemy, lurk under the waves looking for fat cargo carriers to sink, fly bombing/raid/dogfight missions, steal a car and shag a hooker, kill a cop, kill your enemies/mate over the Internet and on and on. If it wasn't for the huge advances in eye candy, there would be very very little to distinguish game play of all video games over the past 10 years.

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.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

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 calling bull-.

[Quaunaut]

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

That time of year again

[mgabrys_sf]

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)

We Get Signal!

[cloricus]

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.