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."
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 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.
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.
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)