The video game industry

[gotrocks]

^^ To you and kagatob i say this:

It seems like you guys just flat out don't like the games that are coming out nowadays. Maybe you've grown out of gaming. Maybe you're just really into the older stuff and the new stuff no longer appeals to you. Maybe you're depressed irl and the things that used to hold joy for you just really dont anymore so you want to let some steam out on here as a sort of therapy.

Whatever the case, there are lots and lots of good games that have come out in the last 5 years, and there are lots and lots of good games coming out in the future.

I already did answer your question in my novel up there, guy above me. But if you didnt read it, we've have bioshock infinite, tons of indy games that warrant replay (minecraft, limbo, mark of hte ninja, countless others), mass effect series, tomb raider, uncharted 3, this list can go on and on.

Kagatob you pointed out that 9/10 games that come out nowadays are shit, i'd say you are generalizing a bit. 1/5 games are mindblowingly good. 1/5 of games are good, fun to play, etc. 2/5 games fall somewhere in the middle of the sprectrum, they are ok, but you may not finish the campaign and it'll likely be a return or resell if you get the channce, and 1/5 are complete shit that never should have been released (Aliens colonial marines).

This is really all about perspective, and I just dont think you guys are going to see it from mine, or how many games journalists and gamers see it. Again, the reason for this is really up for you to discover, or to not discover, but theres no way for me to argue this point with you guys [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Basically it boils down to this: You guys dont like the games that are coming out, lots of other people do, you can insult them/us all you want but it wont change the fact that there are indeed good games coming out every month and that hte industry as a whole is doing very very well.

-gotrocks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Eliseus]

Originally Posted by gotrocks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^^ To you and kagatob i say this:

It seems like you guys just flat out don't like the games that are coming out nowadays. Maybe you've grown out of gaming. Maybe you're just really into the older stuff and the new stuff no longer appeals to you. Maybe you're depressed irl and the things that used to hold joy for you just really dont anymore so you want to let some steam out on here as a sort of therapy.

Whatever the case, there are lots and lots of good games that have come out in the last 5 years, and there are lots and lots of good games coming out in the future.

I already did answer your question in my novel up there, guy above me. But if you didnt read it, we've have bioshock infinite, tons of indy games that warrant replay (minecraft, limbo, mark of hte ninja, countless others), mass effect series, tomb raider, uncharted 3, this list can go on and on.

Kagatob you pointed out that 9/10 games that come out nowadays are shit, i'd say you are generalizing a bit. 1/5 games are mindblowingly good. 1/5 of games are good, fun to play, etc. 2/5 games fall somewhere in the middle of the sprectrum, they are ok, but you may not finish the campaign and it'll likely be a return or resell if you get the channce, and 1/5 are complete shit that never should have been released (Aliens colonial marines).

This is really all about perspective, and I just dont think you guys are going to see it from mine, or how many games journalists and gamers see it. Again, the reason for this is really up for you to discover, or to not discover, but theres no way for me to argue this point with you guys [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Basically it boils down to this: You guys dont like the games that are coming out, lots of other people do, you can insult them/us all you want but it wont change the fact that there are indeed good games coming out every month and that hte industry as a whole is doing very very well.

-gotrocks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In my previous posts I point out how Kagatob has a bias bigot mind. Only his opinion matters and whatever he says goes.

Also

Basically it boils down to this: You guys dont like the games that are coming out, lots of other people do, you can insult them/us all you want but it wont change the fact that there are indeed good games coming out every month and that hte industry as a whole is doing very very well.

QFT.

[Gadwen]

Needs at least one more option.

Storytelling built around game mechanics.

[Ranlron swiftsong]

Um this is an answer towards gotroks and rhumas:

The problem is:Some good games do come out, but there are a lot of mediocre games coming out too.In the past, we had less games coming out, and more time taken towards producing them.A lot of big named guys are trying to cater to a wider audience, that part is true, like square enix was doing, and doing so, it appeals less to a wider audience.Dragon age origins was a really good game and one of the more recent rpgs i liked, and i thought lost odyssey was better than the more recent ff games.

There are good games coming out, its just that we are overwelmed by the shitty ones, and feel depressed that the game companies we trusted betrayed us.Se betrayed me, capcom betrayed me, with resident evil series for an example, and mgs4 being a let down a bit.Re5 was a total let down compared to re1-code veronica.It looks like survival horror is coming back, so i'l hold my breath in hope, and buy it.

[August]

The problem with the gaming industry is the same that plagues the movie industry: money.

See, back in the day, when gaming was a new thing and movies weren't so expensive, studios would produce lots of games/movies on original content. They'd get a hit out of every 1/10 or so, and thus a gaming franchise would be born.

Nowadays, a shitton of money goes into games/movies as they are huge business. So, instead of a studio funding 10 low-budget games/movies, they're now only funding 1 10x the cost game/movie. And they NEED it to be a success.

So what do they do? They ply back to the days of yore. That's why there's 10+ Zelda adventures, 10+ FF adventures, 30 million mario worlds, and iron man has been coming back to the silver screen every year since robert downey jr. ate a whataburger and quit his addiction to smack.

indie games, should you choose to go there, is where the innovation is happening because once again we're in a medium of 'low budget' games where there can be a ton of crapshoots and we elect to pluck one delicate flower (minecraft, anyone?) from the refuge and give it a nice pat on the back to the tune of millions of dollars.

Of course, now a minecraft clone, Minecraft 2, could come out, and it starts the process.

To keep gaming current and modern and not a reduction on past premise we have to encourage the fledgling independent game and/or film industry so that more people will take risks on original content. Until then, enjoy Spiderman 7.

tomtee

[kotton05]

I usually don't get games as they come out I'm usually tied up in old games. Just beat FF7 again. Trying out Legend of dragoon sometime soon I think.

As for the industry I hope the Indy gamer can take over somehow. The more fingers in the pot the more it becomes a diluted game.

[Gadwen]

Originally Posted by August [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The problem with the gaming industry is the same that plagues the movie industry: money.

See, back in the day, when gaming was a new thing and movies weren't so expensive, studios would produce lots of games/movies on original content. They'd get a hit out of every 1/10 or so, and thus a gaming franchise would be born.

Nowadays, a shitton of money goes into games/movies as they are huge business. So, instead of a studio funding 10 low-budget games/movies, they're now only funding 1 10x the cost game/movie. And they NEED it to be a success.

So what do they do? They ply back to the days of yore. That's why there's 10+ Zelda adventures, 10+ FF adventures, 30 million mario worlds, and iron man has been coming back to the silver screen every year since robert downey jr. ate a whataburger and quit his addiction to smack.

indie games, should you choose to go there, is where the innovation is happening because once again we're in a medium of 'low budget' games where there can be a ton of crapshoots and we elect to pluck one delicate flower (minecraft, anyone?) from the refuge and give it a nice pat on the back to the tune of millions of dollars.

Of course, now a minecraft clone, Minecraft 2, could come out, and it starts the process.

To keep gaming current and modern and not a reduction on past premise we have to encourage the fledgling independent game and/or film industry so that more people will take risks on original content. Until then, enjoy Spiderman 7.

tomtee

I definitely agree about indie games being where its at right now. This is the great thing about digital distribution that often gets ignored when the subject is brought up. Platforms like Steam, or even Xbox Live have allowed the indie game developer to bring his product to the masses without being tied up with some publishing deal, and without investing millions of dollars to distribute their games. Now I really can't speak to how fair these platforms are in terms of profit for the indie devs, but at least they are able to get their games out there and be taken seriously.

[Ranlron swiftsong]

Originally Posted by kotton05 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I usually don't get games as they come out I'm usually tied up in old games. Just beat FF7 again. Trying out Legend of dragoon sometime soon I think.

As for the industry I hope the Indy gamer can take over somehow. The more fingers in the pot the more it becomes a diluted game.

Xbox 360 says hello.Lots of indie free games, but some of them are clearly not professional, like that zombie cat game, and the dragon warrior clone where you pick up monsters.In fact:There are a lot of those kind, but some of em are better designed and have interesting fun ideas.I saw a game that was horror where you used some kinda magic and were killing zombies, and you played a girl inside of a house on xbox 360.It was interesting enough.

[gotrocks]

To raniron:
and august, i already said that in this post =P

Originally Posted by gotrocks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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.

[August]

Yeah i skip over everything to just post my opinion. That's how I treat rants and flames. I can't be reading the half-witted slobber that comes out of most people's mout...err hands/fingers?

That's cool tho. It's definitely the case.