Slashdot Mirror
The Battle For the Game Industry's Soul
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times has a story about the imminent release of Battlefield 4 on 29 October, as it's one of the most highly-anticipated video games of the year. The most interesting part of the article is where it highlights what a mammoth undertaking such 'AAA' games have become. There are hundreds upon hundreds of people working full time on it, and hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in its development. These number have been rising and rising over the years; how big do they get before it becomes completely unfeasible to top your last game? The article also points out that the PC platform is beginning to wane in popularity. Nobody's quite sure yet whether it'll level out or go into serious decline, but you can bet development studios are watching closely. With bigger and bigger stakes, how long before they decide it's not worth the risk? Even consoles aren't safe: 'Electronic Arts is nevertheless trying to extend franchises like Battlefield to devices, because it must. But at the same time, it has to grapple with the threats undermining traditional gaming. Though the classic consoles are getting reboots this fall, there is no guarantee that new models will permanently revive the format's fortunes.' And of course, the question must be asked: do we even want the 'AAA' games to stick around?"
The Game Industry doesn't have a soul. After all the failed DRM, the way they treat their developers and abandoning older game servers that many still use, it's clear they don't have a conscience or a soul.
Let them their respective deities sort them out.
There are various reasons why gamers start to turn away from those so precious "triple-A" titles.
1. Boring old game in a new cloth ... oh silly me, how could you SELL the same game again?
I think I'm not the only one who is fed up with buying the same game over and over. Battlefield is no exception to that. Lemme guess, new weapons and a few new scenarios with a few new graphics and some shiny... else, same shit as last year. Still the same game modes, still the same problems with cheaters, still the same interface, still the same options; It is simply still the same game. Yes, people will buy it because it's the new one, it's the shiny one, and some of the killer bugs that bothered you the most in the previous games are finally fixed, which only begs the question why they existed in the first place and whether it would not have been much more feasible to simply fix them instead of
2. DLC
Riiight, that way you can. The new magic of the gaming industry: DLC. Or, as I prefer to call it, "buying the last few chapters of the book extra". Because that's what DLC more and more turns into. You pay full price for a game only to find out that not only its addon, sorry, DLC was already planned, but it is actually an important part of the story which is not concluded before you bought at least 2 addons, turning a 50 bucks game into one that costed closer to 100, just to see the friggin' story of it, we're not talking about some additional storyline or actual addon content in the traditional sense, where a game is sold and if it's a success a "mission disc" gets released. These "addons", or rather, second part of the game, are already planned and developed before the game hits the stores. Your only hope is that the game bombs enough that you don't care about the end of the story.
And don't even hope that you could play multiplayer anywhere without the DLC, even if it's not part of the multiplayer game. Which leads us to
3. Planned obsolescence
With multiplayer servers being held firmly in the grasp of the game developers, and you having no chance to even play a local game, they dictate when and for how long you may play it, at least its multiplayer part, which happens to be the interesting part of those games. Rest assured, the moment the next version of the game comes out they'll turn off the old servers to force you to buy the next one (which is essentially the old one, but you can actually play multiplayer again...).
So if you wonder why people turn away from AAA titles, here is your reason. Indie games are cheaper, they offer more variety (because indies can actually dare producing anything but "tried" concepts), they usually offer complete games and they're by no means inferior to those AAA titles. They may lack a bit in graphics, but screw that, I take gameplay over shiny anytime!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The people telling you the PC is obsolete and on the way out are trying to sell you its "replacement."
The only problem is tablets and phones can't replace the PC for the same reason motorcycles and skateboards can't replace your car.
Nobody wants to do real work on a mobile device. Stop pretending they do.
To be honest, that what is marketed as 'AAA'-games is all like Wolfenstein. Walk through a maze and shoot bad guys. The humble bundle games feature original gameplay. This is so much more fun than 'the same game, requiring an even tougher graphics card' I am having a lot more fun with Cookie Clicker than I have with all the battlefield AAA-nonsense together.
You've hit the nail on the head.
The gameplay element of what the press tout as AAA titles hasn't really advanced any since Wolfenstein 3d was released in 1992.
Think about that, no original gameplay in 21 years !
Certainly the graphics are shinier and the weapons are different but the essential gameplay of run around a maze, pick up power ups and ammo, shoot enemies, rinse and repeat hasn't changed....
And of course, the question must be asked: do we even want the 'AAA' games to stick around?"
No, we don't have to ask that question. We already have the answer. GTA V sold over eleven million copies in the first day of sales. It's grossed over a billion dollars. Only a complete fucking idiot would doubt that there's a market for good, high-quality AAA games.
And of course Slashdot seems determined to put those complete fucking idiots' thoughts on the front page.
The more we accept "Hollywood-model" games ...
Sorry, but that is about the same as saying 'The more we accept McDonalds-type food ...'
We need to accept - on all terrains - that as a collective, we are a bunch of naked monkeys. Our biological makeup (or evolutionary history, if you will) makes us vulnerable to having our primitive behavior elicited by marketing techniques and other forms of manipulation. For an individual that may not be a problem, but for a collective, it is. Especially when the collective is a source of resources for for-profit organizations. Yes, I am talking about the free market.
The problem in your reasoning, imho, is that the current state of the (Hollywood-)system is somehow mainly due to the evilness of MBA's and 'industry types', where in reality the nature of the free market is thus that it eventually finds the most profitable way to make a profit. That includes (ab)using our (most) common vulnerabilities and treating us all like naked apes. Every sufficiently mature free market does this, simply because it is profitable, not because it is run by a bunch of malicious bastards.
See also, Cow Clicker, for a remarkable example of (ab)using vulnerabilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker
http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml
Publishers are killing gaming on the PC through ever escalating levels of DRM. The PC has pretty well always been the better platform for gaming from a technical sense for hardware capability. You had the ability to upgrade your system, patch it and customize it at levels that a console could never match. A console is only updated every so many years, patching is a logistical pain if is even possible and the only customizations you can do are typically to the outside of the case.
The problem is that publishers have been cranking up the DRM to higher and higher levels of entitlement. What originally started as nothing more than deprivation of the product quickly became deprivation of your computer. Games would do things like replace hardware drivers and interfere with your ability to burn CD's or DVD's. The DRM measures were typically not disclosed and worse not uninstalled upon removing the game.
Gamers could spend hours upon hours trying to figure out why their computer wasn't working correctly only to discover that SecureROM or another product had done something like replacing drivers for their hardware. Nobody appreciates having a product sabotage their computer and the DRM companies refused to cooperate with disclosing anything about what they were doing to peoples computers. The result often required hours of troubleshooting at best to a complete rebuild to restore a computer. You also had the loss of the original software that caused the problem to begin with and were typically out at least $50.
Add in stunts like mandatory activation, registration and serial numbers and you end up with something that cannot be used anonymously and forced the disclosure of marketing information. Even when activation worked many companies would then self destruct the ability to use software if you made certain undisclosed changes. Things escalated to the point where simply changing a piece of hardware in your computer would be enough to ruin your game as it then refused to play.
Self entitlement furthered to the point where you had to be online to check in your serial number just to start a game. Publishers were oblivious to the fact that that most of the world does not live in Silicon Valley and for many people this was not reasonable. Once publishers started requiring players to be online in order to play at all they really burned the last of the bridges.
For a regular user, even one who has purchased the software it has become a situation that simply isn't worth it anymore. Countless millions of people have purchased a piece of software only to turn around and then download the pirated version just to get something that worked and didn't break their computer.
Are computers technically superior in just about every way? Absolutely, but the computer gaming industry is imploding from self entitlement and the publishers will have a future of paying higher and higher royalties to Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft.
The gameplay element of what the press tout as AAA titles hasn't really advanced any since Wolfenstein 3d was released in 1992.
Yeah, no real advances beyond multiplayer, team-based multiplayer, destructible scenery, dynamic maps (as in L4D2), new weapons mechanics (such as Unreal Tournament's bio rifle), emphasis on stealth (such as Metal Gear Solid and Deus Ex), dynamic AI that sends swarms based on player progress and performance (the L4D Director), modding support that allows anything from minor skinning to complete remakes, RPG elements blending in to the FPS, and the aqueducts. Aside from those things, what have the Romans done for us?
And what about dungeon crawlers? They haven't advanced since Nethack. Diablo was better graphics and nothing more.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The example you point out - Whedon's Much Ado about Nothing - highlights the problem with your argument: it's self-defeating.
One guy gets paid 30 million dollars to make the Avengers, and then goes and funds his own little side project of love. Great, so that'd be some game studio exec or manager type - "I got 30 million bitcoins for building Halo 7! Now I can fund a little labor of love of my own, something I feel passionately about, but which isn't commercially viable."
Awesome, sounds like fun.
The problem? Your post pointed it out:
In the case of a game... who are the low-/un-paid actors? Riiiiiight... the engineers, graphic designers, voice talent, etc. etc. that actually MAKE the game under the direction of the "well-heeled exec" who's got a boatload of money.
Except for an actor in a 2 hour film, it requires a couple days of their time to show up, learn their lines, and shoot their scenes. For an "intensive" project, maybe a couple weeks. This sort of thing schedules nicely for actors - and let's be honest, much of Whedon's go-to crew, while talented, isn't pulling down "fuck you" money for the most part from their tv & film roles. They're probably doing nicely, but not exactly Brangelina territory.
For an engineer working on a game, it can requires months or years of their time to develop the finished product, and that's months or years of "14 hours a day, head down, slogging through code."
So. Even if you give lead devs and designers a boatload of money as profit sharing, they STILL will struggle to turn that into a 'professional' project, because the help they need to realize their vision is TIME and TALENT intensive, which means it is *MONEY* intensive.
There's a reason why open source does poorly in games: it often costs a lot of time, talent, and money to build a good one, and the "show up and contribute what you can & want to contribute, when you want," model of development fares poorly in this sort of an environment.
I think you made the GP's point.
Whoopee-doo. I get to splatter the bad guys with goo rather than shoot them with a mini-gun. That's incredibly innovative.
When they're not making you sit through tedious, unskippable cut-scenes and canned dialogue, games are still mostly just following the only corridor available and shooting things, except these days you don't even have to worry about collecting health packs because your health magically regenerates after ten seconds. Even the 'open world' games are still mostly just running around a few streets in a world that's dead when you're not around.
Or maybe you're a snob.
There's room in the market for AAA games and the other side - the indies.
Complaining about how AAA games suck is like complaining about how blockbuster movies suck. Yes, you're not looking at high art here, but damn, sometimes you just want a fanciful escape for a few hours. Whether it was superheroes of Iron Man 3, or giant robots and monsters of Pacific Rim, people do want mindless entertainment.
Then there are plenty of indie games (alas, the vast majority do suck) which are free to do anything. Some attempt to be high art, others the beginnings of a AAA game, and all that.
Denying either really doesn't help anyone - sometimes you want mindless but pretty entertainment, and other times you just want something different.