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[LoSboccacc]

There still are alternatives.

But what we the gamer from the '90 have to understand is that now we are the minority; plain and simple the target market has shifted to the new generation of consolers, which have a different taste from us.

No reason to be all snotty about their taste being worse or better, they are just a different target for marketing.

Large companies will always go to the larger consumer base, no matter what. But we still have market power, and little company will always target us as before.

Just ignore the super modern call of duty stuff, pretend it doesn't exist. It wasn't made with '90 gamers in mind.

It is like the difference between a small coupe and a saloon: they cost more or less the same, but they are for different people, plain and simple. But I don't see the coupe crowd lining up linching manufacturers because they build more saloons.

[DoomOnion]

I think it's generally due to the fact that the developers have to satisfy the investors, more specifically, the company has to satisfy the investors.
They are more or less in the market for the money, that is a fact, and to make money, well, you have to get as much investment as possible and draw as much profit from it as possible.
That's said in a nutshell though.

It also explains another 'trend' of modern gaming as well, games usually focus on graphic assets and physics instead of game mechanics than before, that would be also due to the fact above;
What better way to spend millions of dollars? Why of course, improve the graphics!
It's almost failsafe, the better the graphics become, the more attractive the game looks. It's not a gamble, and it's almost guarunteed to attract players that doesn't fit in the niche market.

[Leatra]

Industries, corporations, businesses tend to go rotten when they grow large enough. That's when you stop supporting them and turn to the next new guy.

Well said. I already stopped supporting Bethesda and I guess it's time to let Bioware go too.

If I could make a wish, I'd wish for all gamers of every region to abstain from mainstream developers. There would be a mail campaign to each, stating that gamers are tired of on-disc DLC, tired of DRM and tired of the same games each year.

That would be my wish too. I can't criticize and complain about big companies and expect them take me seriously while they are making a shitload of money.

If it wasn't for the new indie companies that's getting popular nowadays, I would say PC gaming is doomed. We are not doomed... yet. We still have some good years left.

[Neonivek]

Honestly whenever a friend tells me of a MMO he was interested in that went free to play... I do not join in no matter HOW GOOD it was before.

For some reason a game going free to play seems to be the title of DEATH since the quality just goes down and down.

Though why wouldn't it? With subscription the only way to keep players is to make the game better. With Free To play that idea is secondary to just offering more junk.

[DoomOnion]

If it wasn't for the new indie companies that's getting popular nowadays, I would say PC gaming is doomed. We are not doomed... yet. We still have some good years left.

I don't think I agree with you on this one though, it's pretty stable as it is right now, I am talking about the market of course.
Major companies capitalise on high-investment, high-return titles, usually through 'mainstream' titles or even their own franchise.
Indie developers still intend to make money, or some, very few of them, develop games just because they want to, and they will nonetheless still make games that target niche market.
They won't just, magically disappear out of thin air in a few years.

[itisnotlogical]

Besides, the majority of people buying games are casual and/or social gamers. Do they even want games that take 30 hours to play through in singleplayer? I doubt it. People here are Dwarf Fortress fans, we are as niche as it goes, pretty much. I'm not condescending towards casual gamers, I'm just saying they are a different demographic compared to people reading this thread.

See, I never got "hardcore gamers" that supposedly only play "hardcore" games. I love classic XCom because it doesn't pull any punches, but sometimes I feel like having my balls tenderized just a bit less. Sometimes I even want to play a "casual" game like Mario Party, or one of the pseudo-MMO's on Facebook. It's not about the difficulty or some sort of loyalty to my "group" or "demographic", sometimes I'm just in the mood for different types of games. It's the same reason I have dubstep, metal and rap on my MP3 player at the same time; sometimes I get sick of one and want something that the others have to offer.

[LoSboccacc]

also cut back with the elitism, they build mcdonalds because that's what people want. just don't go there if you don't feel like!

[alway]

I really have lost a lot of faith in the game industry recently. DRM scandals on top of Pay2Win on top of the umpteenth World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo on top of on-disc DLC have all but ruined this last generation for me, and I'm not that excited about the next one either.

Gaming is still a very expensive hobby, and the products are rapidly losing their longevity.

Lolwut.
1. Gaming can hardly be called expensive. For the past half a year or so, I've primarily played:
Minecraft ($15)
Planetside 2 ($0)
Kerbal Space Program ($13)
Cataclysm ($0)
Dwarf Fortress($0)
XCOM($50)
FTL($5)
Sim City 4($10)
Tribes Ascent($0)
Humble Bundles($5 total)

That's well under $100; a tiny fraction of the value of the time I spent playing them. There are literally no games I would play, old or new, that I am currently aware of (there are, of course, obscure indie games out there I've never heard of which would likely pique my interest), even if every game in the world were free. The monetary cost is tiny compared to the nearly 1000 hours I've gotten in total in that half year period. Or, as this webcomic succinctly puts it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It comes down to how much you value your leisure time. Would I give $.10 for an hour of leisure time? (yes) In that case, my opportunity cost is at least $100. Would I give $1.00 for an hour of leisure time? (yes) In that case, my opportunity cost is at least $1000. Would I give $30.00 for an hour of leisure time? Apparently so; I could be doing additional freelance work for a company at a rate of $30.00 an hour, but chose to play video games instead. In that case, my opportunity cost is around $30,000.
Which compared to <$100 going to the developers of the games is a rather large portion of the sum costs. Particularly since most of those are free, and all but 1 are under $20. I've spent more on hardware over that time period than on software.

I also find this to be a bit funny:

World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo

People love to be gamer-hipsters, and shit all over the more 'mainstream' games. The reason they are long lived franchises and genres with little innovation or change is because it sells. Not because some evil overlord in some EA head office declares it to be, but because it sells. Modern Warfare 3 made $1 billion in revenue in a mere 16 days. Apparently someone wants these games. In fact, a several millions of someones want these games. To not like a genre or sort of game is one thing; that's perfectly alright. But to declare "bah! these games are evvvvviiilllll and terrible, and EA should spend its resources making cool games that people actually like!" is absolutely stupid; if people don't like them, then why are they selling 10 million plus copies within days of release, while <niche genre you would rather see EA making> are selling 10,000 copies? And why the goddamn hell should EA or any other company be construed as evil for making that which people are voting for with their wallets? Simply implying 'well my opinion is worth more because my subjects beliefs are better' is just as delusional as jehovah witnesses believing that buggering people at 10AM when they're trying to sleep is a good thing.

Another thing of note: when talking about those evul money-grubbing good-for-nothing franchises, people tend to conveniently forget the ones they happen to be fans of. Be it Pokemon (The game where to catch 'em all, you need to buy both versions at full price, and possible version for other generations too; and that's not even getting into their history of special handouts to real world event-goers), or some other sacred cow.

[Leatra]

If it wasn't for the new indie companies that's getting popular nowadays, I would say PC gaming is doomed. We are not doomed... yet. We still have some good years left.

I don't think I agree with you on this one though, it's pretty stable as it is right now, I am talking about the market of course.
Major companies capitalise on high-investment, high-return titles, usually through 'mainstream' titles or even their own franchise.
Indie developers still intend to make money, or some, very few of them, develop games just because they want to, and they will nonetheless still make games that target niche market.
They won't just, magically disappear out of thin air in a few years.

Of course, indie devs will always be here and we still have good "mainstream" AAA games (Dragon Age, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect, etc) to play. But if mainstream games become more... mainstream and "casual", and if the next generation of gamers turn out to be what I'm expecting, indie devs might feel crushed under the dominance of big corporations.

I still have hope though. Thanks to things like Kickstarter and all that.

[Majestic7]

It's not about the difficulty or some sort of loyalty to my "group" or "demographic", sometimes I'm just in the mood for different types of games. It's the same reason I have dubstep, metal and rap on my MP3 player at the same time; sometimes I get sick of one and want something that the others have to offer.

Ah, but most of the people playing casual games don't play niche games. That is what I'm talking about. You are in a different mindset by being interested in a wide variety of games, including games with a learning curve. Most people aren't. Big companies naturally try to create games with a maximum audience. It isn't like the mass market was necessarily a demographic on its own. It is just a place where a maximum number of demographics can meet and consume the same product.

[Leatra]

I really have lost a lot of faith in the game industry recently. DRM scandals on top of Pay2Win on top of the umpteenth World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo on top of on-disc DLC have all but ruined this last generation for me, and I'm not that excited about the next one either.

Gaming is still a very expensive hobby, and the products are rapidly losing their longevity.

Lolwut.
1. Gaming can hardly be called expensive. For the past half a year or so, I've primarily played:
Minecraft ($15)
Planetside 2 ($0)
Kerbal Space Program ($13)
Cataclysm ($0)
Dwarf Fortress($0)
XCOM($50)
FTL($5)
Sim City 4($10)
Tribes Ascent($0)
Humble Bundles($5 total)

To be fair, we can all just go play flash games on the internet if you are going to count free games too. Also, not everyone lives in a country where games are incredibly cheap. Try paying at least $100 dolars for every new AAA game. Besides, you ninja'd me! Actually, we posted at the same second but I guess you were a millisecond faster, or something.

I agree with you about how we shouldn't bitch about "bad" games which actually turns an incredible amount of money. As much as I hate these companies, we created these corporote behemoths and we, as gamers, are responsible for it.

This is what I was talking about when I said that indie devs might get crushed under the big companies... ONLY if we let them.

[tootboot]

There's good DLC and bad DLC.  As long as the original game was complete, the DLC is reasonably priced, and you get a reasonable amount of content, I'm not opposed to it.  (If all those things are true it's not much different than the expansion model)

As far as the bad DLC it's not going to go away until people stop buying it.  Gamers as a demographic have shown they have low willpower.  They may complain a lot about bad DLC but most of them will still plunk down their wallet in the end.  (Like that Steam screenshot of half the people in the 'Boycott CoD4' Steam Group playing the game on release day.)

[itisnotlogical]

Lolwut.
1. Gaming can hardly be called expensive. For the past half a year or so, I've primarily played:
Minecraft ($15)
Planetside 2 ($0)
Kerbal Space Program ($13)
Cataclysm ($0)
Dwarf Fortress($0)
XCOM($50)
FTL($5)
Sim City 4($10)
Tribes Ascent($0)
Humble Bundles($5 total)

Most of those are indie titles, which are already cheap.I ndie gamers are far in the minority, and most mainstream games are $50 on launch. Bare-bones consoles are also around $200 at retail, not to mention online multiplayer services, headset peripherals, extra storage capacity, etc.

I also find this to be a bit funny:

World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo

People love to be gamer-hipsters, and shit all over the more 'mainstream' games... (wall o' text)

I'm not concerned about the fact that franchises are popular, or even that certain franchises are more popular than others. I love Mario, but the NSMB games have been almost the same game on three or four platforms for the past few years. Ditto Modern Warfare and Pokemon.

The problem isn't with a glut of sequels. Some of my favorite games have been sequels, like Diablo II, Super Mario Bros. 3 and LoZ: A Link to the Past. My problem lies in the fact that there is practically no innovation happening today. No, a single new power-up or slight graphical tweaks do not constitute innovation. You can play the prettiest, flashiest game of Tetris ever, but it's still Tetris and you'll be just as sick of it as you were the last time you got sick of Tetris on the Gameboy.

I'm not ripping on popular games or trying to be cool, but I really feel like modern mainstream games are suffering from a lack of creativity. No matter your opinion of Metroid: Other M, you have to admit that it is different from Metroid Prime and the 2D scrollers. If only we had more Metroid: Other M and less New Super Mario Bros. or Modern Warfare.

Believe it or not, game consoles used to be innovative if they played something other than Pong. People got bored with Pong, and that allowed the Atari 2600 to dominate the early 80's, because it was innovative enough to play games other than Pong. The tools game developers have today are more powerful than they've ever been, but devs have petered out to bland, safe, homogenized games.

"bah! these games are evvvvviiilllll and terrible, and EA should spend its resources making cool games that people actually like!"

Thanks for the cartoonish oversimplification of what I'm trying to say, but that's not what I'm saying at all. You are truly a credit to straw men everywhere.

[alway]

To be fair, we can all just go play flash games on the internet if you are going to count free games too. Also, not everyone lives in a country where games are incredibly cheap. Try paying at least $100 dolars for every new AAA game.

Well, yes, but if you expect to get the latest and most expensive things while still having a cheap hobby, you will be sorely disappointed no matter what your hobby. And even in that regard, this hobby is extraordinarily cheap. The only big difference between high-end gamers and low-end gamers is hardware. That certainly affects which games you can buy, but again is entirely unrelated to the price of the games themselves. Even when it comes to software, you can get so much entertainment for free that you could do without purchases entirely. Of the 3 games that took up probably 80% of my time, Minecraft cost $15 when I bought it 2 years ago, Planetside 2 cost nothing, and KSP cost $13 over a year ago.

In comparison, a camera and lenses would cost a high-end hobbyist photographer several thousand a year. A backpacker could expect to spend a couple hundred on keeping their gear up to date and in repair.

In contrast, we spend, at the very most, about $200 a year on games. Much less than that if you actually were worried about saving money and waited for sales.

Lolwut.
1. Gaming can hardly be called expensive. For the past half a year or so, I've primarily played:
Minecraft ($15)
Planetside 2 ($0)
Kerbal Space Program ($13)
Cataclysm ($0)
Dwarf Fortress($0)
XCOM($50)
FTL($5)
Sim City 4($10)
Tribes Ascent($0)
Humble Bundles($5 total)

Most of those are indie titles, which are already cheap.I ndie gamers are far in the minority, and most mainstream games are $50 on launch. Bare-bones consoles are also around $200 at retail, not to mention online multiplayer services, headset peripherals, extra storage capacity, etc.

I also find this to be a bit funny:

World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo

People love to be gamer-hipsters, and shit all over the more 'mainstream' games... (wall o' text)

I'm not concerned about the fact that franchises are popular, or even that certain franchises are more popular than others. I love Mario, but the NSMB games have been almost the same game on three or four platforms for the past few years. Ditto Modern Warfare and Pokemon.

The problem isn't with a glut of sequels. Some of my favorite games have been sequels, like Diablo II, Super Mario Bros. 3 and LoZ: A Link to the Past. My problem lies in the fact that there is practically no innovation happening today. No, a single new power-up or slight graphical tweaks do not constitute innovation. You can play the prettiest, flashiest game of Tetris ever, but it's still Tetris and you'll be just as sick of it as you were the last time you got sick of Tetris on the Gameboy.

I'm not ripping on popular games or trying to be cool, but I really feel like modern mainstream games are suffering from a lack of creativity. No matter your opinion of Metroid: Other M, you have to admit that it is different from Metroid Prime and the 2D scrollers. If only we had more Metroid: Other M and less New Super Mario Bros. or Modern Warfare.

Believe it or not, game consoles used to be innovative if they played something other than Pong. People got bored with Pong, and that allowed the Atari 2600 to dominate the early 80's, because it was innovative enough to play games other than Pong. The tools game developers have today are more powerful than they've ever been, but devs have petered out to bland, safe, homogenized games.

"bah! these games are evvvvviiilllll and terrible, and EA should spend its resources making cool games that people actually like!"

Thanks for the cartoonish oversimplification of what I'm trying to say, but that's not what I'm saying at all. You are truly a credit to straw men everywhere.

So your first point is that you are upset that if you opt to spend more money, you end up spending more money? If money is an issue, play cheap games, not expensive ones. Simply by opting to buy a $60 COD game rather than playing Planetside 2 or a similar free FPS, you are admitting that, whether you are aware of it or not, you see COD as being worth at least $60 more than the free alternative.

As to the other point: Almost by definition, mainstream games consist of a tried and true formula; people want to know what they are getting, and know what sort of quality to expect from it. Innovation cannot occur there at a rapid pace simply because missteps cannot be afforded. Imagine if COD:MW3 had tried some new, never before tried formula, completely changing things up. And it failed. Activision-Blizzard has a net income of about $1.1 billion annually; if COD:MW3 had, instead of selling $1 billion in copies, sold a mere $100 million in copies, that would wipe out their profits for most of the year. More than that, it would damage the brand for years in the future, likely losing an overall sum at least that much in future iterations, even if they managed to address the problems. In short, they would be risking the careers of both themselves and hundreds of others throughout a massive company; even those working on more niche titles whose overall contribution to the industry would be much larger than an 'innovative' COD style game.

In contrast, games like Ubisoft's From Dust can be very innovative; the company's primary moneymakers aren't being jeopardized. From Dust, for those who don't remember, was a very innovative game (in spite of any gripes about quality of the console port or gameplay mechanics). It built on academic papers only a few years old, doing things which a decade previous would have been impossible simply due to computational requirements. A niche game, sure, but produced by a behemoth of the industry; a perfect counterexample to your argument. These things do occur in the industry, they just aren't cranked out by massive teams and massive budgets for obvious reasons.

[Sappho]

I see this conversation in various forms all the time. Gamers furious that the gaming industry has changed over the years to become more profitable for big game developers. I honestly really don't understand the outrage. If you think a game is not worth what you're paying for it, then don't buy it. All the games I play are either cheap or free, and all are DRM free because I don't like that system, so I don't support it. A game is either worth the money or it's not. The reason the gaming industry works the way it does is because it works. People are paying, lots of them, and the developers are making loads of money. Why would they stop? It's a business. They're entitled to charge as much money as they think people will pay, and so far they're not exactly going bankrupt. The ones who are going bankrupt will influence the ones still going to avoid whatever business model didn't work, or else they'll also go under. The industry will continue to change, just like all industries do. They're not obligated to do it the way you want just because you don't want to spend so much money. And if people stop buying the games with paylocked content, they'll stop making them, plain and simple. (Of course it should be clearly marked on the packaging before you buy it that some of the content is paylocked, or else it's false advertising and I think you'd be entitled to a refund if you decide you don't want to do that.)

When they start charging insane amounts of money for clean water and food and people start dying en masse, I will be fully outraged. But these are games. They're a luxury item that no one needs. If you don't have the money or don't want to spend it, play a free or cheap game, or try going outside or reading a book, those are nice things too.

I never grow tired of this little rant about the culture of entitlement in the States these days. I think it applies to gaming equally as well as cell phones and flying.