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."
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
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.
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/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?
...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.
...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.
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.
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.
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)