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Is the video game industry heading towards another crash?
FomaldehydeJim
Member UncommonPosts: 673
For those who aren't aware, in 1983 there was a crash in the video games industry. This was largely as a result of a plethora of poorly realised and received game releases that resulted in a loss in consumer confidence. It resulted in the burial of ET in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial.
I see similarities today. The steam greenlighting system and the likes of Kickstarter result in the release of an awful lot of games of dubious quality. Many popular IPs seem to regularly release lazy sequels or movie tie-ins.
The games industry is booming now, but we all know what inevitably comes after a boom. So is the industry heading towards another crash?
I see similarities today. The steam greenlighting system and the likes of Kickstarter result in the release of an awful lot of games of dubious quality. Many popular IPs seem to regularly release lazy sequels or movie tie-ins.
The games industry is booming now, but we all know what inevitably comes after a boom. So is the industry heading towards another crash?
Comments
It is too fragmented now to have any kind of crash affect the whole industry.
The MMORPG industry, for all intents and purposes, has crashed, in the West at least. Very few new AAA/"big" games are even being made anymore, and a lot of the companies that used to be players in the MMORPG space don't make MMORPGs anymore, are no longer relevant in the industry, have been sold, or just went under.
I think the so called "crowdfunding" industry will crash (despite a few successes like Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity), as many such games have come out in crap shape or failed to come out at all. Same for the current "early access" trend that is currently the rage in the industry: many/most people will eventually pay "full price" for a couple too many crap early access titles, learn their lesson, and never support another one again. It is already starting to happen in the gaming space.
So while certain segments of the gaming market may crash and companies fail (and it has happened already) this is not 1983 where the atari 2600 owned 90%+ of the market, either.
So, probably no general crash.
The console market had one in the late 90s when consoles like Dreamcast went under.
There will be purges now and then, making bad copied games is one reason, jumping too quick or too slow on new technology is another which I think we will see soon with VR.
And purges can be merciless. some really good companies goes under while certain companies turns into giants instead and devouring some of the less successful companies.
I am sure there is already a sort of crash,hundreds of developers going out of business or going into maintenance mode remaining to collect whatever they can from any unsuspecting gamer's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Could it be called disposable gaming? I don't see it as a crash waiting to happen, but it seems to me like the market is adjusting to some sort of new norm (or it might not be new, and I'm just misinterpreting what I see).
Expect one major to go under in the next five years.
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"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Anyway, doubt there will be a crash anytime soon. Still too much money being thrown at the screen and if global economy keeps advancing, well, you still have huge largely untapped markets.
I have never seen as many big titles being released as rapid as it now.
And I am overflown with choices, even if I wanted to play every other big game,
I literary could not because to many are released at once.
And I have to wonder, have the consumer base grown this much over the past decade to support this many titles.
That said, I do kind of feel I get served "more of the same" (aka. Assassin Creed I with a different gimmick).
And the only innovation I see is coming from the indie scene.
I work in game industry (even had one of our games advertised here), and thing aint pretty.
There is amazing hyper-production of games happening right now. But the business people are completely clueless and dont get it. So you can easily expect that around 90% produced at this moment are doomed to fail right at the door.
The free or cheap offering is so large that you simply can not earn no money unless you F2P and make disgusting monetization schemes.
On other hand we have games like Witcher 3 or GTA V that pushed the bar so far up that its almost impossible to reach anywhere near that quality without team made of best experts in the world and hundreds of millions of investment.
So yea.
If you are having plans of entering the gaming business , its a very bad place right now.
However the crush , that will happen will not be the same as 1980s. The games will not die. They will just become really bad investments
There is no MMO on the horizon that interests me. Crowdsourcing and "early access alpha" titles are everywhere and every one of them I've tried has sucked badly. It's a bad time in the PC gaming industry, which I fear will suffer. But crash? I don't know. Gaming is still hugely profitable for multi-platform (particularly mobile) companies, which means that PC games are going to get more and more homogenized, dumbed down, and ported after-the-fact.
I so miss the early days of PC gaming. It was such an exciting rush. RIP.
Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
This will only be good for gamers in the long run.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1983? What was going on then in the video game world, pong? like probably .05% of the population played video games then and mostly pac-man type games at the local pizza restaurant.
I don't think that is an applicable model to predict a video game recession over 30 years later...
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Those will be the first to crash.
I think the big money games (MMORPGs) are already bad investments from the corporate perspective.
I think that is driving two things: 1) lots of offshore repackages for the western market. 2) crowd funded indies trying to fill the void left by lack of AAA releases.
We are now starting to stabilize, and as such seeing more indy entries in to the market. We should expect this to start showing returns in 2016-18. Remember it takes 3-5 years to make a solid PC MMO.