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

May not be so gloomy afterall

[mccalli]

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. And Nintendo game platforms have always been places where new ideas get tried it. From the doomed Virtual Boy through bongos-as-controllers to dual-screen touch-sensitive handhelds, a Nintendo machine has always given things a bit of a go.

Maybe the new creativity might start showing through that?

Cheers,
Ian

Re:May not be so gloomy afterall

[Gnostic Ronin]

Well, depends on what the developers can do. It allows different types of inputs, true enough. But so did eyetoy and the DS.

Most games making extensive use of either one looked more like tech demos to me (mostly I looked at eyetoy). The rest of the time, they used the technology very sparingly, relying on more traditional control scemes. In fact, most of the "eyetoy" functionality in games is reserved for scanning your face into the game you're playing, not some innovative gameplay feature. The only "true" game that makes use of eyetoy is Antigrav, the rest are either collections of minigames or minigames in traditional games. I expect similar from Wii -- sure Wii's Wario Ware will be fun, but I'm not expecting much more than Tech demos for the first year or two.

As with everything else that's popular

[gasmonso]

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/

VR is getting closer....

[MindPrison]

...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!

Indie developers CAN set up EA the bomb...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

And the funny thing

[Sycraft-fu]

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.