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Is the history of the gaming industry about to repeat itself?
Roybe
Member UncommonPosts: 420
Many of us old timers remember the near death experience of console and computer gaming that occurred in the mid 1980's. I am coming to see a few parallels from that time ocurring again.
First, the corporate game publishers and producers are losing sight of the reason for their becoming large providers in the first place. Mainly; providing quality games that were accessible, fun, and worked properly. These days, 'get it out the door, patch it later if we sell enough' is the rule of thumb. Add to this that the overall market has few AAA titles in any genre that are breaking new ground. A shooter is a shooter, either First Person or Third. An MMO is an MMO, in a race to get the population to pay the publisher and developers for the privilege of playing their copy pasta project based on the current market leader/s.
Consoles are lagging behind computers now, with most companies expanding their console offerings horizontally (think peripherals like Kinect here, services like download and play) rather than moving their respective platforms vertically (better processors, graphic boards, etc.). All these issues are based on sound, conservative, business reasoning, but the games industry is not for the conservative or faint of heart.
With the investors leaving 38 Studio and Vivendi dropping it's 60% stake in ActiBlizz, it looks like there will be a lot of pain coming in the current industry, for the programmers, artists, etc. as well as the population that plays these games. A market correction will definitely hurt all, but in this day and age, I am wondering if there would be a bounce back capability in the market when the risks are so large and the return on investment could be so questionable in the eyes of the investor population.
Comments
I sincerely HOPE we face a crash at some point.
Then maybe we'll see a million copies of Black Ops keeping the ET cartridges company.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
One can only hope.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
I am with you on this one!
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
While I don't want to encourage a crash (and all of the job losses that go with it)......
Busts are a natural occurence in markets, and they have some salutary effects. For example in the post-recession world people do have better balance sheets when it comes to savings to debt. Now if only we could learn those habits without tragedy.
Same for the gaming industry. I don't want to see a market crash. Yet I still am relatively confident the market would rebound rejuvinated once the fat has been trimmed. Yet is there a way to do it without that? Can we just have EA crash and serve as an example to everyone else?
lol nothing is going to crash. Things are just going to change. Gaming will become more and more prominent (entertainment wise of course). Consoles are nearing the end of the current generations life span. New ones will come out and it will start all over again as it did with the 8bit, 16bit, 32bit and 64bit+ consoles.
Things will repeat, but not in a bad way. It will repeat like any industry does (whether over a year, decade or more). I think this next rehash will be even better though as we will be getting better, more innovative and entertaining games as a result. Down with the souless couldnt care less about games companies! Up with the new guys who actually give a shit about what they make and do!
rellay boring that dev teams always copy again and again but not get anything new
RTS RPG
80's PC gaming never had a 'near death experience". If anything PC gaming saved the consoles by being so successful during that period.
But I do think consoles are over due for a hardware update. Time for the console kiddies to crow about how their graphics "blows away" anything on PC. Least for the next year before PC owners buy the next card that makes consoles look like crap. There's your history repeating itself.
What your saying is not what you get in a corporate enviroment. Corporations have no soul, they are all about milking as much money as possible to make they're investors happy.
It's the Corporate culture period, not just gaming.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I think the industry has hit a wall at the moment. The cost of producing a AAA game is way to high. Till tech/innovation/ or something else helps to reduce the cost I think we will see souless games being made because the people that make them are slaves to investors.
With the economy the way it is why would the console industry want to put out new systems right now?
Industry seriously need a big crash to get some sense knocked into their heads.
Stupider, shallower, more 'streamlined' games that follow "safe" design-route and failing frequently casue of that.
All of that with more and more annoying and bigger monetarization. Disgusting.
Yeah like the days when Electronic Arts, Blizzard and Bioware were small companies who actually give a shit about what they make and do!
For all the lauding of "indie" developers, their protesting aside, they would do the exact same thing if they were in the shoes of those "mainstream" companies. Innovation and originality really is a scarce resource.
Mario wasn't a PC game.
PC gaming did okay, but really, it was Mario that saved 80's gaming.
And as far as console kiddies being able to crow about how it looks better than anything on PC...... not gonna happen even now. PC's are at least one (maybe two) generations ahead of the "next-gen" consoles which aren't even out yet. That basically means that when you see the new consoles, they will launch basically with the graphics and power of your average PC gamer's machine, not even the maxed out rigs. (My DX10 card and 5 year old machine will still laugh at the "next-gen" consoles)
Yeah, when they get big they lose their love for the process. Its all about money. But thats why the companies come and go. There was a time Interplay splashed in front of many of the games I played. Now they have more or less been rendered moot. Sierra was huge at one point too. It's just the way the cycle seems to work in the world. I wouldn't be surprised to see EA games, Ubisoft and Activision dethroned. Out with the old and in with the new. The old this time seem to be a bit more stubborn than most of us would like. IMO all these microtransactions and over abundance of DLC is going to be their nails in the coffin.
actually I disagree. Microtransactions and DLC's will probably be what saves an indie company. With low money in at the start they will have to create the cash flow from the product not from the idea of the product like the big companies do.
Yes it is. It happens with retail stores, food chains..... everything. Sometimes there is a behemoth that sticks around (like McDonalds), but many companies that grow too large and are mismanaged end up getting replaced. Look at Nokia and RIM for instance. They got lazy, large and overly confident. I could name a bunch of examples.
I am not talking about a specific corporation as it appears you suggest. Within that corporation things may or may not ever change, but that will be their eventual downfall. Thats when the little guys rise up and move on in. I don't care how big you are, once you piss off your customer base enough your sales and then stocks drop.
I agree with this. However, it's more (in my opinion) because of the fundamental shift in the corporate culture over the last...20 years, maybe? 25? Corporations have always been about maximizing investors money, so they've always been soulless entities in that regard. But somewhere along the way, and I don't know where, but the short-term dollar became more important than the long-term dollar. That was where the real corruption of the corporation, imo, took place - when keeping the company name good for the long run lost out to make-a-buck-and-run.
On the one hand it's easy to dismiss as 'nostalgia' (of course, it's hard to claim nostalgia for something I never actually worked in lol), but one needs only look at how the workers are treated and the shift from the late 50's to the modern day in how the corporate/company workforce outlook was prepared to see that something caused a 180 degree change. I do beleive that there are solid innovations out there that simply aren't 'economically feasible', but they are only not feasible when viewed through the prism of the short-term dollar.
But...using your phone analogy what new, not established big company that just did not make phones, has the cash to step up and make a phone people would actually buy. I fear the game industry is the same. People want the flash and wow that takes a lot of cash to get out.
I agree. I am more or less referring to the money gouging tactics that the big guys are using though. IE; holding back content to release it as DLC on or shortly after release. Its they way they utilize it thats wrong IMO. If its not abused its a good thing. One of the best examples I can think of for microtransactions are mobile games. Some of them are ridiculous, others are pretty clever and don't feel greedy.
Corporations in it for the money, well that's unique to video games...
Business is business. Its a recession, are some companies are going to go belly up? Yep. Some games too, maybe even a higher amount than normal. Video Gaming, as an industry, is just damn too big to crash. There will always be a demand, save humans stop making electricity.
The doom and gloom posts from the one-percenters are not proof of anything abnormal, especially in comparison to other industries.
And occupy MMORPG.com has begun......
Well look at Minecraft... started out with nothing now he has plenty to invest into something big. Plus thats what investors are for! When looking at the phone market, Roxio and Gameloft also come to mind. Both started with mediocre basic run of the mill games. Gameloft is still releasing some neat stuff, but you can tell as they grow they are losing care too lol...
would enough people pay a monthly fee to play Minecraft? It is novel and interesting for what it is and they will get money for something. I guess that something will say whether a new company rises or not.
Really ?
I started gaming in the 80's and only noticed a small dip around the year SEGA went down as a consolemaker. (90's)
Monthly fee for minecraft? I doubt it. But people would certainly purchase add-ons and expansions for it. Though hes making a ton without all that. Point is, he started from nothing and jumped in with the big guys with something that people wanted. Sure it wasn't 100% polished but it got peoples attention. The original forum posts are still online regarding how he started. Literally by getting peoples opinions as he made it. Now he has enough cash to invest or create something bigger.
I am not suggesting someone will just pop into the scene with something high calibre though. They'll have to work their way up.
Then when they do they to will get lazy and someone else will move on up lol.