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The current state of the gaming industry.
Zombiemambo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is a big topic. This is a huge topic. I'm hesitant to even make this post because I could be asking something way too general.
What do you think is the current state of the gaming industry?
All of it. Gameplay, sounds, visuals, consoles, computers, big companies and indie programmers. Where do you stand? Are you pleased with the way things are going? Do you think gaming is going down the toilet?
This is a topic I've only dwelled on for a very short time. EGM just published their 'Japan' issue, not only a closer look at Japanese culture, but the stagnation of their industry. Simply put, Japanese game design hasn't gone very far since the 90's. We're still playing the same RPGs, shooters and fighting games that we did over a decade ago. There's innovation here and there, but even companies like Square Enix realize that the East isn't moving as fast as the West. It's an interesting topic, something I hope we can cover.
What about the separation of consoles and computers? Every year they grow farther apart, but closer together. Now we're seeing more 'general purpose' features like music and movie players, some are even downloadable (Microsoft is planning on introducing Netflix to the XBOX Live service). But every year it seems PC gaming is becoming more 'foreign' to the rest of the gaming world. It seems your either a PC gamer or a console gamer, something that's a strange phenomenon to me.
What about innovation? We complain about clones, but the fact of the matter is gaming has always been full of them. As soon as a successful formula is found, other people want in on it. We've seen Halo and Mario "killers" for a long time, but during the early days, any one idea had at least three different games. Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man...the list goes on. Anyways, I'm sure most people aren't worried about clones so much as uninspired design. First person shooters suffer from it terribly. Take any handful of them and you probably couldn't separate most of them from the pack. Ever heard of Alpha Prime? Didn't think so. And what about RPGs? There's always the young, naive hero who discovers he has incredible powers, thrust into a situation he's not ready for. Then there's his soft, quiet girl "friend" he has known since his childhood. Both have feelings for each other and chances are nothing will ever come of it. We also have other archetypes, the silent, angst-ridden anti-hero, the big, cocky wrestler type, the little child who seems innocent and ignorant but she's magical and super smart. Roleplaying games are really lacking in three-dimensional characters.
Graphics. If you ask me, everything looks like plastic or looks as if it has all been dipped in a coat of gloss. Colors are being washed out, skies are almost never blue, environments often suffer from repetition, everything needs to look 'gritty'. I don't mind playing a colorful game every once in a while, guys. The only strong color I see these days is blood red. Hell, a lot of the time the blood is a dark red/black mix. I'm sure at one point we were all sick of games that looked like Sonic and Mario. Now I'm sick of games that look like Halo and Gears of War. We could really use some refreshing graphical design. And don't get me started on bloom. Ugh. The only time bloom exists in real life is when you stare into the sun.
So what is your take? What do we need to work on? Like Japan, has our game design become stagnant? Do you think we're headed in the right direction or the wrong one? Speak your mind, fellas.
What do you think is the current state of the gaming industry?
All of it. Gameplay, sounds, visuals, consoles, computers, big companies and indie programmers. Where do you stand? Are you pleased with the way things are going? Do you think gaming is going down the toilet?
This is a topic I've only dwelled on for a very short time. EGM just published their 'Japan' issue, not only a closer look at Japanese culture, but the stagnation of their industry. Simply put, Japanese game design hasn't gone very far since the 90's. We're still playing the same RPGs, shooters and fighting games that we did over a decade ago. There's innovation here and there, but even companies like Square Enix realize that the East isn't moving as fast as the West. It's an interesting topic, something I hope we can cover.
What about the separation of consoles and computers? Every year they grow farther apart, but closer together. Now we're seeing more 'general purpose' features like music and movie players, some are even downloadable (Microsoft is planning on introducing Netflix to the XBOX Live service). But every year it seems PC gaming is becoming more 'foreign' to the rest of the gaming world. It seems your either a PC gamer or a console gamer, something that's a strange phenomenon to me.
What about innovation? We complain about clones, but the fact of the matter is gaming has always been full of them. As soon as a successful formula is found, other people want in on it. We've seen Halo and Mario "killers" for a long time, but during the early days, any one idea had at least three different games. Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man...the list goes on. Anyways, I'm sure most people aren't worried about clones so much as uninspired design. First person shooters suffer from it terribly. Take any handful of them and you probably couldn't separate most of them from the pack. Ever heard of Alpha Prime? Didn't think so. And what about RPGs? There's always the young, naive hero who discovers he has incredible powers, thrust into a situation he's not ready for. Then there's his soft, quiet girl "friend" he has known since his childhood. Both have feelings for each other and chances are nothing will ever come of it. We also have other archetypes, the silent, angst-ridden anti-hero, the big, cocky wrestler type, the little child who seems innocent and ignorant but she's magical and super smart. Roleplaying games are really lacking in three-dimensional characters.
Graphics. If you ask me, everything looks like plastic or looks as if it has all been dipped in a coat of gloss. Colors are being washed out, skies are almost never blue, environments often suffer from repetition, everything needs to look 'gritty'. I don't mind playing a colorful game every once in a while, guys. The only strong color I see these days is blood red. Hell, a lot of the time the blood is a dark red/black mix. I'm sure at one point we were all sick of games that looked like Sonic and Mario. Now I'm sick of games that look like Halo and Gears of War. We could really use some refreshing graphical design. And don't get me started on bloom. Ugh. The only time bloom exists in real life is when you stare into the sun.
So what is your take? What do we need to work on? Like Japan, has our game design become stagnant? Do you think we're headed in the right direction or the wrong one? Speak your mind, fellas.
Zombiemambo on
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There's always going to be shovelware. Look at the Wii this generation, look at the PS2 last generation, look at the PS1 the generation before. Look at the NES or the 2600.
There's always going to be lame trends. Eeverything is brown or grey, everything's a Red Alert clone, everything's a Doom clone, everything's a SMB or Contra clone.
But right now, just like always, there's still great games coming out for every platform. I could list them off, but it would take awhile just to hit the amazing titles from the last two years, so I'll let you fill in the blanks yourselves. In any case, if there's good games coming out and more good games on the horizon I don't think there's anything to worry about.
There's probably big changes coming in the (near?) future as far as distribution is concerned, but unless you've staked your retirement fund on EB/Gamestop stock it's not your problem.
I'll sound the alarm myself if someday there's suddenly no more games worth my time, but as long there's more attractive titles than my money and/or free time can hope to encompass I'm not afraid of that happening.
Specifically, that games aren't very innovative. I think that this can be attributed to difficulty and risk. A next-gen game these days is expected to have essentially all the things that a good movie has (production values, characters, plot, writing, etc) but with the additional dimensions of player interaction with the world and gameplay. Not only do developers have to create a more open world, they have to anticipate how players will interact with that world and build it in such a way that their experience will be fun. This seems like a really daunting task, which I think is why most developers stick to the safe, proven ways of creating fun as much as possible.
Getting into new territory is a serious task, especially considering that the budgets for developing a game have ballooned tremendously. Now, as with Hollywood and its parade of "safe bet" cookie-cutter blockbusters, the industry has gotten too expensive and the people investing in games aren't willing to take a financial risk to try out something new and different. There's just too much money to be lost if it fails. The bigger the budget, the smaller the likelihood of being able to do something truly non-traditional.
Lastly, games tend to follow certain familiar patterns because, to a certain extent, it's what gamers want. Getting used to a new control scheme or a new gameplay mechanic in a game takes a certain investment of time where you're using a lot of mental resources just getting used to how to play the game rather than actually playing it. For a lot of people this process isn't as much fun as picking up a game with familiar controls and gameplay mechanics, and just enjoying some good story & action. In the realm of multiplayer and especially competitive gaming, keeping the basic framework of the game as familiar as possible is unquestionably a good thing. A big part of the fun of doing a competitive activity is learning the basic mechanics so instinctively that your brain can do them almost subconsciously, freeing up your conscious mental resources to think up new strategies and react to the actions of your opponent. Competitive sports don't change their format and require the player to learn new rules every year, and competitive games shouldn't either. This is why Starcraft, Warcarft III, and counter-strike still blow other competitive online games out of the water in player count despite being old. Competing against other people only gets more fun as the community ages.
There's other things I could get into, but it's late. Long story short, I don't think the maligned "lack of innovation" in the gaming industry is as bad as people say it is. If you want to experience the most innovative stories out there, read a book because that's the strong point of the medium. If you want to see the best characters and acting out there, watch movies because that's the strong point of that medium. If you want both of those things and an interactive world, well, you might have to be prepared to sacrifice strength in some areas for a cohesive whole.
Also, the best way to play innovative games is to stay away from the big-budge titles.
Bellingham LAN Experiment
Also, how people complain that there hasn't been any innovation. Guess what, change doesn't come in one giant lightbulb that immediately changes the entire world and reforms entire genres in a single game. It comes in small bits and pieces here and there that get continually added to create a new standard for the basics of the genre far beyond what the standards were even a few years ago. There was absolutely nothing even vaguely like... say... Puzzle Quest even 5 years ago. Was it overly innovative when it came out? No, it was just the thin veneer of an RPG laid over a game that had been popular for a couple years. You could make the same argument for Half Life 2, Disgaea, Guilty Gear, etc etc.
Same as always, there's just more consoles coming out and more developers working on them. Consoles are getting closer and closer to the PC in their feature lists, but they're still less powerful and don't come with mice and keyboards. Any genre that thrives on communication and exact controls will continue as always.
Two of the three press conferences at E3 were about how you'll be able to buy movies and tv shows and talk to friends and shop online through the comfort of your own Xbox/Playstation (because it's obviously up to Sony to bring the gift of the internet into our everyday lives) and almost nothing about actual upcoming games. I don't want the people releasing the consoles to depend on others so much for software, since in the example of the Wii, there is usually quite the difference between what technology the console developers create, and the manner in which third parties utilize it.
1. Reconciling the PC Video Card Gap
2. Increasing development costs shutting out smaller developers or forcing them under the Actiblizzion (or EA) umbrella
Stuff that excites me about gaming right now:
1. Proliferation of online play to the masses
2. Good games being developed in joint between good studios and EA as publisher -- bodes well for a solution to issue #2
3. Pricing becoming less rigid (10 years ago a game would be listed at one price to fit all scopes, now we see a big gap between your standard retail HD title ($60) and a small, throwback arcade style game ($10 downloadable)
4. Digital distribution is becoming more popular among the developers (eg: see Rockstar joining in to Steam)
5. Graphics have reached a point where games can become highly stylized in 3D. See: Mirror's Edge, L4D, Madworld. It certainly has happened before, but not as smooth and pretty as it is now. Hopefully this will lead to lower development costs, by way of graphics hitting a 'plateau' in advancements.
6. Every current platform for development has titles worthy of playing, and a business outlook that indicates that they won't be dead and gone in the next couple years--Dreamcast style.
I think this is just another symptom that gaming is becoming mainstream. If one in three American households has a videogame console in it*, it's not a niche market anymore.
Which strikes me as neither good nor bad for us, the core gamers. The press conferences were pimping stuff other than games, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.
*pulled this statistic out of my ass
It'll just be harder to find the good stuff.
Then the world can burn on a silver platter.
What? Halo is not gritty and dark and grey grey grey.
Maybe he just means retarded. Cause that's what Halo is. Retarded.
I think all three of the consoles launched this generation, while technically leaps and bounds above their predecessors and ancestors, are simultaneously the most flawed consumer electronics released in the industry. You have a revolutionary console that has changed how we will interface with games forever that arrived with its marquee feature underdeveloped and inadequate storage, a second entry into the market that steals the unreliable crown from the PS1 and PS2 hands down, and a third entry from the company that crashed the party and became the life of it over-reach into the future and fumble big time.
Oh, and only one of the above three did backwards compatibility right consistently.
I'd love to hear some ideas on how the technology can change for the better. Hopefully we'll see solid state drives and even smaller chips in our GPU/CPU's. They'd better all have full hardware backwards compatibility, because buying games that I already bought for your previous console again for a fee via digital distro ain't fucking happening.
I know you asked about games, but I think that now more than ever software has been affected by the hardware that it is played on, and where software goes in the future will largely rely on how the hardware is handled. People used to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System to play Mario, but these days they buy an X-Box to play online, and the name of the game isn't really important so long as it's RB6/Halo/GR/Gow/etc.
I would like to say that one company is also doing downloadable content right, and that is ... despite how shitty the release schedule has been lately ... Nintendo. It's not only the fact that these are classics, but they're priced just right, are perfectly emulated and were crafted with professionalism. The little WiiWare stuff I've seen has been of much higher quality than the Live Arcade competition. Toki Tori feels like a game that was released on the SNES, whch is a good thing for micro-transactinal games.
Somewhat off-topic, but I totally disagree here. I think XBLA is leaps and bounds ahead of the VC/WiiWare. It's also got the advantage of having been around longer, however. I realize most of this boils down to personal preference, though. There isn't a whole lot out on the VC that appeals to me that I haven't played a bunch of times before, and WiiWare has offered me very little of interest. Whereas the Live Arcade is chock full of things I enjoy... hell, I think there's something coming out every week this month that appeals to me.
1: Gaming is dying, which just means it is ripe for rebirth.
2: PC Gaming is dead, or at least the way most people consider PC gaming to be.
2A: It got too expensive and inconvenient for the average consumer to keep up with PC games compared to keeping up with console games. Most people don't have the technical know-how to upgrade their PC, or the money to get a new gaming PC every six months. But even the dumbest consumer can figure out that the little white boxes that say 'Wii' on them means that you can stick the disc inside in your Wii and have fun.
2B: 'Casual' PC Gaming is and will flourish in the form of flash-based games, which are gaining increasing complexity and depth by the day.
3: Nintendo's new strategy is creating fertile ground for new and innovative ideas to prosper for new gamer.
3A: This might piss off a lot of more seasoned gamers, and I foresee a lot of people leaving gaming in disgust.
4: I think that gaming is going to become more mainstream and less of a hobby.
4A: As a result of this, people who define themselves as players of games (Gamers) are going to be left in the dust. As the market expands the sway the 'hardcore' gamer has over the developers is going to diminish.
All of these claims and subclaims are my opinion, and thus are probably wrong. If you want to debate me, that's fine, but I'm probably too stupid to change my opinion, so you'll be wasting your time.
Edit: When I started this post there were only 10 other posts. 6 people managed to write stuff in the time it took me to write my little shenanigans.
I'm just going to debate this little section because I think you're pretty well off otherwise and I love sleep.
Nintendo went to war with the army they had. Yes, they could have spent the next hundred years perfecting motion control, and making it just as good as a gamepad, but somebody else would have gotten to the technology first. They'd arrive late to the party that somebody else started, and they would in even more trouble.
So the motion control is 'undeveloped', but that's kind of the point. They didn't have the amazing motion control that would appeal to a control freak who plays Gears of War or Halo, but they had it good enough to appeal to my mom and dad, who looooove wii sports. And now, after raising several billion dollars in potential research money off of Wii Sports, they are coming out with Wii Motion Plus, which appeals to more hardcore gamers. It's an amazing business model.
Bipolar much?
There's really no point in debating you when you didn't bother to back up many of these opinions. Like the most important one - number 1 - why is gaming dying?
I don't see gaming becoming less of a hobby, even though it is becoming more mainstream. Books and films are mainstream - yet there are still film buffs and bookworms. "Television viewer" might not exist as a term (though "couch potato" is sometimes used as an equivalent) but there CERTAINLY are people out there who dedicate a lot more time to watching TV than others.
My point is, and I stated it poorly, that right now the core audience for 90% of games is Joe Gamer, who buys 90% of games. The industry is predicated on appealing to those hardcore, buy everything gamers. Movies don't sell well by appealing to the people who see every movie. Books don't sell well by appealing to shut-ins. They sell well because they appeal to the mass market. And devoted gamers are going to be left in the dust because they'll become nothing more than 1% of the bigger audience, and they'll have to adapt their taste to what is being produced. (I pretty much threw in the TV line because I thought it up originally in a more evocative sense but I really liked it)
As for the industry dying, it seems obvious to me, and it's all the points the OP posted. Games are all the same, they're appealing to a small audience without attempting to grow that audience, and they are costing exponentially more to make every generation.
Ooh I will!
I really don't know why people say PC gaming is dead.
It's not as popular as consoles now, but it's definitely not dead.
Certain games aren't on the PC, but that's in the same way as how certain games aren't on the console. Alot of genres thrive on it, like RTS's, shooters and MMOs. Look at STALKER, for example. It's a very hardcore title, yet it still managed to sell over 1 million.
Also, the TV viewer analogy is pretty stupid. The audiences for gaming are more comparable to audiences for films or music, where there are casual fans of the mainstream big budget stuff, who they watch or listen for fun, and then more hardcore fans who enjoys the art-houses or the niche titles, and are more in-tune with the culture, and then there is everything else in the in between.
PC gaming is of a dying breed because it's just easier for people to use consoles, and the and the difference in power of a 'good computer' for gaming and a 'good computer' for real life has been widening in recent years. Plus, and this is shear anecdotal evidence, but in my group of 10 or so collegiate, super gaming geek friends, I honestly don't know a single person with a desktop.
Yeah, the TV analogy is stupid, and I'm taking it out. It took away from the argument.
Yes, films target the masses and not film buffs. And yet, non-mainstream films still come out and still get lapped up by avid movie lovers. We've seen no real reason to expect the same won't be true for gaming.
Wait... games aren't trying to expand their audience and yet somehow gaming is becoming more mainstream? What?
The game industry, as it stands right now, is dying because they aren't trying to expand their audience.
I think, in the future, they will succeed in expanding their audience and become more mainstream.
Yes, there are films for film buffs, but they are 99% of the time small and independent. When I think 'the current state of the gaming industry' I think the big publishers: the equivalent to hollywood, which is far removed from the artsy films for film buffs.
There's a difference between plugging things in and disassembling a PC to put a new graphics card in, and that has for me always been the key step in being a PC gamer.
In that case, how is the industry dying? It's making more money than ever before. Games are pretty much bigger than films at this point.
I think that's an arbitrarily narrow view. If you were talking about the current state of films you wouldn't exclude small or independent films just because. Just like you shouldn't exclude small or niche developers when talking about games. Besides, creative stuff still comes from the big guys occasionally, in both films and games.
My point is: 'Gamers' are going to have less influence on the industry than they did in the past, when they were basically the bread and butter. Small companies are perfectly valid, but they aren't going to be making huge amounts of money, so the big wigs won't care.
My other point is: Sales dollars are a shitty metric for measuring value in the industry. I mean, every new console costs more than it's ancestor. Even games got more expensive with the HD consoles. Is the industry doing way better just because they are earning a lot more money because they bumped the price 10$?
Edit: Furthermore, despite revenue going up in recent years, most game companies are actually losing money. HD games that cost 20 million dollars to produce might sell a ton, but it doesn't matter if they can't earn that money back.
Further Edit: It's 3 in the morning and I'm not getting anywhere. If you want to understand where I am coming from, read some of Malstrom's articles like http://malstrom.50webs.com/disruptivestorm.htm , which sum up my position pretty well if non-shittily.
Who cares if the "big companies" care whether or not smaller studios are making money or not? Gamers care about getting quality games, bottom line. And if we're still getting them - be it from small OR large companies, that's all that really matters.
Sales are a shitty measurement for value in the industry? Then how do you measure it? If it's by quality of games, you can read the posts on the first page for yourself and see all the gamers saying that there's tons of good stuff out now and coming up.
I saw this exact argument occur in the "Nintendo sucks!" thread. Know what happened? The guy arguing in Axiom's place lost. Just my 2cents. Just go find the locked thread and start like on page 4-5. It goes on for like 5-6 more pages until he leaves because he can no longer defend his arguments, many of which are similar to Axiom's.
Have you ever seen him and Axiom somewhere at the same time? Maybe they're the same person!!!
Nothing in this paragraph is true.
Really, you've got to look at the broadest possible picture to judge the "health" of the industry. Winnowing it down to what's good for hardcore PC gamers or casual console gamers or what-have-you is putting people in buckets that don't reflect reality.
You're Hitler.
It's summer. People spend time outside, which means that they stop playing games for 5 minutes, and the brief respite makes them consciously aware that there's nothing to buy for LITERALLY THE NEXT TWO WEEKS OR SO and they go into some kind of crazed panic, eat their dog, and then, on a chair made from its bones, sit in a corner late at night and pen doomsday prophecies.
Pretty much business as usual for this time of year basically.
Out...side? Aren't there bears outside?
Personally, I think XBLA ranks behind WiiWare.
You see, on WiiWare Nintendo isn't going to act as gatekeeper. Meaning developers like me don't have to jump through a ton of bullshit hoops to get a game on there, or not have a game cancelled by them. All you have to do is be a company, have an office, and get your game ESRB-rated. The only way this industry is going to grow, besides becomine a standardized industry, is if the companies that make the hardware acting like gatekeepers and provide more support and less red tape bullshit.
We had a game DONE. Ready to go. For XBLA. And it was fucking cancelled because another (guessing bigger) company was going to bring a game in the same genre to Live Arcade, and Microsoft only wanted one game of that type on there. Since then I've never heard of the game in said genre ever mentioned or announced or even rumored. Note they have no problem with big publishers shitting out horrible emulated overpriced retro games, or letting anybody with Unreal Engine 3 put a game up.
Right now I'd say it's under serious consideration to become a WiiWare-only distro. With Microsoft's bullshit red tape and Sony's complete and utter lack of support, Nintendo is the only one doing it right. Yeah, they don't have much HDD space, but all 3 players underestimated how much digital content was going to sell. They're finally addressing the issue on the 360 with an update 3 years after the fact. Sony hasn't done anything and Nintendo can maybe update.
And people need to stop being such hypocrites. I like how every 'gamer' that hates 'casuals' will talk happily about playing Track and Field as a kid but thinks WiiFit is just a casual cashin.
Not anymore. The honey badgers chased them off.
Well regardless of how Nintendo/Microsoft do business, I think at the moment XBLA has the stronger lineup. The way they do business can come back to bite them in the ass, certainly, and if that happens then things may change but at the moment I think WiiWare has a pretty anemic lineup compared to XBLA. And things like a gimped version of Rock Band with no DLC really don't help matters.