[gotrocks]

Gaming as an industry IS most definitely growing, however, it's different from what you may think.

In the past, there was essentially 3 "levels" of games coming out. You had the large AAA games like Halo. Games that had huge development teams, budgets, and production. They had massive marketing campaigns. They still have all of this today, it just costs even MORE money to make because of the technology and where it's at. Then there was a mid-level of games, lets call them 'B' titles, games that were pretty half assedly slapped together, never received critical acclaim, and didn't move a ton of units. These games were still made and were still profitable because the time and money required to make them was small in comparison to what it takes to make a game today. This is why you got barbie whatever adventures and spaceshit: the toilet directive and the paper empire. These games had minimal marketing. Lastly, you still had a small handful of indie developers, we'll call them 'I' titles. These games could range from absolute shit to absolute hit (counterstrike is a good example, even though it was a mod). They had NO marketing budget and were generally put together by small teams with small budgets working a job or two on the side while they developed their game.

So what happened?

'B' Titles started disappearing. People figured out that this 'middleware' bullshit was in fact, bullshit. I call it middleware but industry people have a not so nice term for it. And as game development costs for these middleware titles rose, and sales slumped even more, developers who made these cobbled together shit houses started going out of business, and the big boys in publishing realized it wasn't worth it anymore. You either go big or go home. Suddenly, everything was a AAA title. If you were making a game, it had to have a massive budget, marketing everywhere, and huge development teams. This created a TON of great games, and is the reason we have games like Bioshock. However, these triple a titles soon ran into a problem. Because their development was so outrageously expensive, publishers obviously had to make less titles with more money. This meant that if big triple A game xyz didn't sell 2 million copies in its first 3 months, it was an utter failure and lost money for the company. As a result, publishers started taking less chances with new IP, new talent, new developers. They wanted something they were comfortable with, and if you didn't have the pedigree and a '2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 7, or 8' next to your title, you weren't even looked at once. In retrospect, this was all a terrible turn of events for the industry because gamers really got screwed in the end. Publishers needed ways to monetize games beyond the initial purchase, especially because used game sales were EXPLODING, and in game purchases (read: dlc) popped up everywhere. This DLC wasn't always good, and sometimes it was downright scandalous (Capcom famously released a game that had 'Day one dlc' PROGRAMMED ON THE DISC and when you were paying to 'download the fucking downloadable content' you were in fact just unlocking it. wow). In addition to this, the smaller developers with big ideas didn't get funded, because it just wasn't enough to have universal praise and critical acclaim from the journalism side of things - you had to be a triple platinum seller or more to compete.

A lot of games companies started going under at this point. Good games companies making good fucking games. The reason for this was that true hardcore gaming, which a lot of these companies catered to, was a niche market, and there's only so much of that market that can be grabbed per month before all the consumers money is spent and no more is going to come out of their wallets. Smaller teams of great men and women suddenly needed a new way to pay their pills while still doing what they love. And thus came the Indie explosion.

Mobile games burst onto the scene, and this really kickstarted (no pun intended) the entire indie movement. Suddenly anyone (almost) could slap together a game and put it in front of millions of people via the app store or android market. Likewise, social media allowed these smaller developers to get their PC games out to mass markets by simple word of mouth and sell a million copies with a comparatively tiny budget when looked at next to the big AaA titles. Xbox live started allowing developers to create console games WITHOUT huge multi-million dollar budgets, and this gave us a ton of amazing games. Steam was also a huge player in this drive for indie development. The triple A title was certainly still there, but it had new competition in both the casual market, and the hardcore market. Everything seemed to be in chaos, when in reality it was just a transition.

We are just now starting to pull out of this transition. When the dust settles, gaming is going to be in a good place, in my opinion. We are going to have us, the gamers, funding the projects we want (this is already happening via kickstarter) while also getting amazing big budget experiences like Bioshock infinite to blow us away like a summer blockbuster never could. The next 3 years of gaming is FILLED with brand new experiences that look fantastic at both ends of the spectrum. Both sony and microsoft are embracing indie developers in a way those little companies could only dream about 5 years ago, and wasn't even a thought 10 years ago. Personally, i dont think gaming was ever in a decline in the last 5 or so years. There were definitely some stumbling points, without a doubt, but we have consistently had great gaming experiences month to month for years now and it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Whether you're some 40 year old mother who just likes to relax with some angry birds after the kids go to bed, or a 20 something year old fresh out of college and blasting away at CoD in the middle of the night when you have to work early in the morning, gaming has exploded and the new games coming out are going to be better than ever. I am extremely happy this transition occurred, because without it, there would be so many titles we never would have gotten. And all the crap middleware is gone. Now we just have a sprinkling of crap at the high end and a dumptruck load of (usually easy to spot, and certainly easy to read about to find its crap) utter shit at the bottom mixed with a literal treasure trove of golden gaming goodness to find all over. It's like a candy bar, with the triple AAA titles being the aeshetically pleasing and also richly rewarding outer shell of gaming, always drawing you back for more, with the sweet, rich nougat in the center being indie titles, also drawing you back for more but for a different reason, a lighter reason, a different kind of fun (ok so that analogy wasn't perfect, but fuckit this thesis has gone on long enough =P)

In conclusion, Kagatob, I think you are very wrong, and I think there are lots and lots of 'industry' experts who would agree with me. we are about to enter a beautiful time in gaming, transitioning from a relatively mediocre time in gaming (early 2000's) to a still gorgeous yet flawed, still hammering out the rough edges time in gaming (mid 2k's to the present), and finally entering the golden age, where pixels of amazingness will literally rain from the sky, and angels will sing the original halo theme. Gaming hasn't been 'bad' in a very long time. And it isn't going to be bad for a very long time (and yes, i say this with the clusterfuck that is always online drm for everything looming just around the corner). So relax, realize everythings going great, and thank me for the analysis, because I just took you to gaming school in 5 minutes or less (depending on your reading speed. Also, I am sure I left out a section or two that was important to this but I'm EXTREMELY tired right now and need to go to bed, i just had to get this out before any more of this silly discussion went on).

TL;DR? Well here you go:

Essentially,
Present and future:
- two ends of the spectrum
-indie developers making small budget, tons of good games, tons of bad games, bad games are easy to spot.
-big developers making big budget, lots of good games, a few bad ones.

Early 2000's:
-Again, two ends of the spectrum, with maybe a very tiny third end
-medium sized shit games 'middleware', 'trashware', mediocre budget games churned out in sweatshops by dispassioned overworked devlopment teams with the goal of not selling many copies because the game is shit, but also not giving a damn because it didnt cost much to make in the first place. no longer exist because games got too expensive to make and thankfully with the help of the internet and social networks, when a game is shit we know its shit before it even hits the shelves. they stopped making money (thank god!)
-AAA games, still big budget, still big teams, still high expected sales (though not nearly as high as the expectations nowadays). Publihers took more chances because development was less expensive. Niche genres and experiences got a fair amount of attention. Tons of amazing AAA games made in this period, but also a fair amount of mediocre ones, and plenty of bad ones as well!
-Indie games! these were still around but due to a lack of a solid distribution platform, and no backing from consoles, meant that PC only indie experiences were all that could be created, and social marketing (word of mouth advertising) had to literally be done by word of mouth. There were still successes, just not nearly as many. A few gems came out of this (I used counterstrike in my example, even though it was a mod first), and lots and lots of garbage, some of them blatant cash grabs.

That's it! The TL;DR section really only tells a fraction of the tale. For the whole story please read above it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] hope you enjoyed! Feel free to disagree with me and tons of industry vets who know about these things, but you're probably wrong [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. regardless, healthy discussion of any topic is almost always a good thing.