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Author Topic: The Videogames Industry Sucks: Rant About the Decline of the Videogame Industry  (Read 23970 times)

alexandertnt

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*sigh*, I will remember to correct my spelling next time so as to avoid making my arguments look less valid.


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Are you saying that because it's difficult to measure it can't possibly decline?

I never said anything about the "soul" of a video game beyond "what even is the soul of a video game?".

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Or maybe they're like the countless people who predicted the start of WW2 before it happened and were ignored because DOOMSAYERS! "We shall have to fight another war again in 25 years time." ~Lloyd George, talking about the Treaty of Versailles. People who are able to look at the past and the present and make intelligent inferences about how these things will impact on the future.

They are more than likely just stopped clocks.




Most of your criticism appears to be directed at FPS's. In fact, it appears to be directed at a particular type of FPS (the so-called Modern Millitary Shooters). It seems likely that they are just a fad, and will probably disappear soon (what happened to all those WWII shooters that were mass produced in the early 00's?).

Have you played ARMA? With its neat bullet penetration physics (unlike those dumb old games) you can't hide behind a cardboard box or sheet metal and expect it to save you.

I also think that these new graphical effects are still finding their place (they are quite new, after all). Remember when 3D was a new thing? All those games with the ugly Nearest-neighbor texture filtering and obnoxious wobbily 3d geometry. Eventually, game devs will figure out which features to keep, which to dump, and which to tweak. Bloom has already largely gone through this (most new games make much more modest use of bloom, compared to when pixel shaders were a new thing) and stuff like SSAO (That nasty black glow) may very well be on its last breath with all the new big engines supporting real time Global Illumination.



PC's are only more "advanced" in the sense that they expose more funcitonality to the end user. What is available and relevant to developers is quite different. The PS3's Cell processor destroyed PC processors for quite a long time, and was coupled with modern hardware was very much advanced (moreso than the PC in many ways).

Yes, and during that time it still had zero games out to use that sexy processor on :P

The big thing about computers is you have access to practically every game ever made.
Wanna play the newest AAA thing? You can do that. Wanna play something from last gen? You can do that. Wanna play something from fucking Atari??? Do so.

Consoles only let you do the first now. Is sads :(

I can do that on my PSP and phone too :D The only reason you can't do this on a console are the artificial restrictions the companies put on them, not because they are less advanced.

Its a perfectly valid reason not to buy a console, but not really a valid reason not to develop for console.
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This is when I imagine the hilarity which may happen if certain things are glichy. Such as targeting your own body parts to eat.

You eat your own head
YOU HAVE BEEN STRUCK DOWN!

Glloyd

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There are occasionally still good games made [heck Minecraft came out in the last 5 years and that was fantastic] but I do believe the overall quality of the industry and games has dropped dramatically.
You know, I didn't like Minecraft at all, any of the times I've tried it. Just didn't find it fun. *shrugs*

Good to know I'm not the only one.

It was an exciting time to be a gamer. Everything was always constantly improving, game design, technology and game developers seemed to respect gamers.
You missed The Videogame Crash of 1983, triggered because of shit games, market oversaturation, too many consoles, etc. The wikipedia article goes into a lot of detail.

Oh god, ColecoVision, that brings back some bad memories.

If graphics are advancing at the cost of every other single part of the game then there is a problem... A serious problem. I think that the focus on graphics became a problem when we hit the 'bloom' generation of graphics... Let me state this right now... Bloom is not making anything look better... What it is doing is making my eyes bleed.
Let's sidestep bloom for the moment and go back to the issue of whether graphics are advancing at the cost of every other part of the game. I'd like to compare two games.

First, Commando for the C64. Here's a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_789845&feature=iv&src_vid=hDAhixO2t5w&v=ymBBQN45shA
Second, compare that to whichever you may have played of the last few Call of Duty games, or the Battlefield series. Doesn't really matter which one!
Can you say that the only thing that has advanced there is graphics?

I agree with your point, but you're comparing a gap of 30 years. (holy shit, the 80's were 30 years ago.) Your arguments are completely valid when comparing the 80's to now, but when you look at the time in-between, trends start to emerge.

The thing that gets me is that the advancement in games has seemed to slow down in recent years. Personally, I grew up in the nineties, and started playing games then. For me, the advances in video games from 1994-2004 were far greater than the advances from 2004-2014. You went from 2D pixelated games playing on cartridges on a Super Nintendo, to the Original Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube, all CD based, and for the most part, 3D. (And the Xbox 360 a year later). Look at the differences between the Super Nintendo and the PS2. Now look at the differences between the PS2 and PS3. Or the Xbox 360 and the PS4. Or the Gamecube and the Wii U. Not a whole lot has changed over the last ten years in terms of consoles, and I think that is where this perception of stagnation is coming from.

Indeed, there HAS been a sort of stagnation over the last ten years when it comes to consoles, but I think that led to a rediscovery of the PC as an optimal gaming platform. Think about it. Five or ten years ago, how many people did you know who played video games on PC regularly as opposed to consoles. Now how many today? It's like it was when I was growing up. Everyone had Rollercoaster Tycoon, everyone had Sims 1, those whose parents were cool had Doom and later Quake. Hell, I remember when decent games like Rollercoaster Tycoon came in cereal boxes, and everyone would go out and get them, and brag about their parks. In the early and mid 2000's, it seemed like everyone had a console, and nobody seemed to play computer games outside of those who loved strategy games. Even then though, nobody seemed to be talking about them, everyone was focused on the newest GTA and the newest FPS.

Nowadays, it's somewhere in-between the two. There's an abundance of good, cheap, and not overly demanding on hardware games for PC out there. While consoles still have huge followings, and make huge sales, I think that there is a trend towards PC gaming again, and I think that arguing there is a stagnation in the PC world is unfounded, even though arguments can easily be made for stagnation in the console world.

Anyways, that's just my 2 cents. Who knows, in ten years it may swing back and people will stop caring about PC's and indie games again, but on the other hand, there will be massive advancement in how games are made.

alexandertnt

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I should probably expand on what I said about FPS's earlier.

I think most of your complains are more or less valid for these sorts of generic COD'ish shooters, and if you were to title this thread something like "A rant about the decline of the FPS"", I would probably agree with the majority of your complains. Are you mainly a FPS player? Because if so, I think I could understand why you feel this way, but I dont think these complaints apply to modern videogames as a whole.
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This is when I imagine the hilarity which may happen if certain things are glichy. Such as targeting your own body parts to eat.

You eat your own head
YOU HAVE BEEN STRUCK DOWN!

Sharp

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For lots of developers the rise of freemium is coming. There is a big trend emerging that companies don't want people to just buy the product but they want the consumer to keep subscribing to the product, the recent pitches by cloud computing services for gaming all have this by making it easier for developers to monetise their product to keep getting a trickle of income from their consumers.

There is a big argument that freemium actually makes games better because they want players to have a good experience and then be happy to give money to the developers to keep paying for the good experience, to me though it sounds a bit brain-washy. Some freemium is better then others, I totally don't understand how people can pay money to speed up building in Dungeon Keeper, and although Dungeon Keeper sounds like a weird one off oddly enough other games which also do it don't have the same arguments, that may be pricing policy and time or something else. Clash of clans is a popular mobile game and has similar features afaik (I don't play those types of games) but that seems to be successful unlike DK, same for Candy Crush Saga.

However there are other freemium games like Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends which I feel are a nicer model of freemium, in the former there is nothing which affects the game that you can buy, everything is cosmetic which is bought with real money so people who want to pay money can while people who don't don't. In the latter it has appeal to both types of freemium purchasers where you can spend money to get stuff quicker but can also spend money on cosmetics while still allowing all gamers to play fairly. Still however seems a bit brainwashy as they are looking to make the experience addictive as possible so you keep spending money.

However I am not too worried about the rise of freemium games because nowadays games are easy to develop, even ones with fancy graphics, Unity 4 is amazing and Unity 5 is looking to be even better (so excited for when it finally gets released). There are a lot more tools now to make developing games easier and that means there will still be developers who aren't looking to just make some easy money but to actually develop an interesting game. It's becoming easier to make a good looking, interesting gameplay, multiplayer game.

I do like kickstarter as it puts power in developers instead of publishers but I can see why people can be cynical about it, there are some successful projects which have been released though like shadowrun returns (although I haven't played that or the original so I can't see if it was a good project to back or not). Elite Dangerous will be coming probably Q4 this year and it's looking amazing and I'm happy to have backed it (so far). I don't even know when Star Citizen will be released, it would be funny to see how much stretch goal success there would be if people realised that stretch goals also means it's stretching the release date.

So all in all, as a percentage wise yes there is a decline in videogame industry but don't worry because there will still be awesome developers who will make awesome games.
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Farce

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The Game industry sucks

I thought that was common knowledge.  I thought that was common knowledge for several years by now.  AAA gaming is ruled by profit-focused types, is hideously bloated, thus dependent on snatching as wide an audience as possible, which makes bland samey-samey copycat shit the go-to plan, discourages experimentation and encourages shit to be pushed out in spite of completion.  Interference by the big bosses taints and ruins things.  The press is essentially bought.

Indie game development is great, but the systems in place are definitely abusable - Kickstarter and Greenlight especially.  It's hard for me to say much on that Indie front sucking, though, since uh, I think it's really cool.  There definitely is, hmm... I'm not sure what blanket term to use... maybe 'lack of professionality'?  Like that whole Nepotism fiasco with Mighty No. 9 and that one 'community manager' chick that never played Megaman and was shit as a forum mod.

It seems a lot to do with just how business seems to be done these days in general.  At least as I understand it, it's super monopoly-driven, and such big players don't really need to work at improving their product anymore so much as they do maintaining their dominance.

I forget if I mentioned DRM, but that blows ass, also.

Um, I may or may not have tl;dr'd through this entire thread, also.

Virtz

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I just want to say I completely disagree about the graphics part in modern games. It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be in the early-mid 2000s, because advancements in hardware have slowed down considerably. Developers seem downright reluctant to even go with the realistic route and often go in a cartoony/caricatural direction. The things that are actually taxing are most often simply badly optimized (especially if they're ports).
Your mid-range desktop computer can last a long time compared to an early 2000s computer in terms of what it can run. It won't be high settings and you'll miss out on the latest buzzword technology (what even are 5.1 pixel shaders and who cares?), but at least it'll run at all.

And while I will agree that the indie market is overflooding with hipsters and lazy immitators, it can still occasionally give us a really good game that AAA studios could not produce due to cost-versus-profit aspects. For better or worse, the indie market feels a lot like the 90s gaming market in terms of what it outputs. Lots of immitators, some failed experiments, and a few games that stand out and do something great.
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scrdest

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Pfft, Videogames Industry, as any industry pretty much ever, always was about profit. There is a small handful of people who create games and expect to end up with losses and do it anyway.

The problem is not that they are focused on profit, the problem is that they are focused on profit and stupid about it. It is much more rational to make a new Minecraft (NOT Minecraft clone) - the costs of development were, relatively, minimal, and the profit-to-cost ratio was astronomical.

On the other hand, consider CoD - it is extremely costly to make, with budget of millions of dollars. And while they, too, sell millions of units, they may even barely get even with the costs. If you wanted to make as much money as possible, you'd look into new Minecrafts, not new CoDs.

The big companies, like EA, are basically doing cargo cult development. They have no idea what will work, so they go with what they know used to work, plus some random marketable-sounding ideas.
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We are doomed. It's just that whatever is going to kill us all just happens to be, from a scientific standpoint, pretty frickin' awesome.

miauw62

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I used to think that I was born at the end of the Golden Age of gaming. But I was wrong. I was born at the end of the Golden Age of CONSOLE gaming, but right at the start of the Golden Age for PC gaming. The indie gaming scene has exploded with a fucktonne of amazing games that are not all the same, despite the fact that you can, holy shit, recall 3 indie platformers. Fez isn't even all that retro, pixel art is a style.

Most AAA games nowadays are pretty shitty, and there are hardly any games on consoles later than the PS2 that I enjoy. (Notable exceptions include Skyrim and GTA V,  but I don't consider Valve an AAA company because of their work philosophy, which remains close to the "small teams" philosophy). Nothing can be done about that, really, except hope that the masses will eventually get bored.

There is another branch of the industry that you forgot in your rant: Free and ESPECIALLY Open Source games. There are hundreds of small, open-source games, developed by enthusiasts, and a few hundred more free games. These aren't hard to get nowadays, because of the internet. Games are no longer something made by big  companies, effectively anyone can make or contribute to a game, and have a ton of people play it.

Sturgeon's law remains true, naturally, but the good stuff generally floats to the top, and OG is a great place to find good games :P
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rabidgam3r

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I'll just slap down my two cents here, even though you don't need it two more goddamn cents.
Yeah, the industry is in a decline. Military-themed hallways, RPGs getting padded to the extremes, and the oversaturation of "indie" games. What are we going to do about it? We can't do jackshit anymore, Kickstarter's a joke and gamer input is practically nonexistant. I'm just gonna go back and play the games I like without whining about "shitty graphics" and such.
Yeah that gave nothing to the conversation, but I just wanted somewhere to shove my two cents even though who wants them.
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Even if he hadn't brought the server down in a ball of flaming, slow-mo gibbing corgis

Tawa

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If you ask me, you're sort of right and sort of wrong.

First, you seem to be generalizing the game industry based on indie platformers and FPS'es. They still make good RPGs, for one. Your description would imply that the "game industry" is a line, half of it indie games and half of it first person shooters.

Second, you have no backup for most of your problems.

Third, there are games that aren't reliant solely upon graphics.

Dude, did you even google any of this before posting?
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Neonivek

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I honestly wonder if we might actually be getting close to a Triple-A collapse.
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scrdest

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I honestly wonder if we might actually be getting close to a Triple-A collapse.

CollAAApse?
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We are doomed. It's just that whatever is going to kill us all just happens to be, from a scientific standpoint, pretty frickin' awesome.

Mictlantecuhtli

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I'm not sure whether this is meta trolling or if the OP is serious.


Minecraft is an example of a good modern game, despite having all of its features lifted from other games. Yeah.
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Tawa

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First party Nintendo games are actually not that bad, in my opinion. Mariokart and Pokemon games especially have good multiplayer value, and some of the zelda games are worthwhile. (Don't waste your time on Skyward Sword, though.)

Too many people judge game decency by age rating. It's "M" for Mature, people, not "M" for Magnificent.
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penguinofhonor

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My "someone insulted Fez" instincts are tingling. Pixelated graphics do not make something a retro platformer.
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