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?"
Since 1898
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" There are hundreds upon hundreds of people working full time on it, and hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in its development. "
How many people do you think it took to make The Avengers? How many millions?
The video game industry is starting to mirror the film industry, with studio houses having one or two giant blockbusters every month, and using profits from those to fund the smaller "filler" films. And then, you have the even smaller, independant type films, such as what ends up at Sundance or TIFF.
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.
The creativity which went into Monkey Island, The Longest Journey or Grim Fandango, or even Curses and Zork Zero, leave me bored when I confront what is merely a technical exercise. I haven't enjoyed an FPS since Thief.
I remember watching Titanic when it first came out. It was a watershed: after this, films would not be defined by art, but by geekery. And everyone can apply an engineering technique, really.
I booted up a few of my fairly recent FPS purchases last night for PC just to get a sense of where the community is at. CS:S, BF2, BF3, BFBC2, TF2, Q3A, CoD (x), L4D(1-2), etc all still strong. The thing about it is, there are so many decade old shooters that just wont die. I can still play CS 1.6 and will prefer it to any new Call of Duty. But why? Is it a comfort thing? Nostalgia for a past era? Simplicity? Muscle memory? Surely some of that.
..
The new games are still fun, but they feel 'tinny', or less substantive than I'd come to expect for millions of ducats dumped in to a piece of software. With many modern shooters, I feel like they are evolving into a caricature of what a decent shooter would be.
Also, I think as the PC gaming generation gets older fewer newbies (In all due respect of course!) back-fill our ranks. I hope I'm wrong. Anybody got stats on our rate of attrition? LMGTFY yada yada
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
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.
... is sucking because the industry is obsessed with creating movies, not games.
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.
Cloud Imperium's opus-in-progress broke $23 million in crowdfunding this week: AAA independent production and PC-focused development. Works like this are injecting a renaissance of fresh air into the stale industry dominated by bug-dollar myopic publishers.
Games in the nineties were innovative because the creative developers were calling the shots; garage operations flourished. Crowdfunding is making that model viable again with modern production values and PC gamers are in for a hell of a ride over the next decade.
Long live disintermediation!
I think he's right. People don't add up the $2 charges to a grand total. It isn't just these games, it's convenience stores, Starbucks, etc. People don't realize that the $2 Candy Bar after work costs them ~$500 a year or that the Starbucks in the morning costs them ~$150 a month.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
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
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.