Gaming dying etc etc
- Thread starter Fusionxl
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And the difference is...what, exactly?zefiris said:
Your metaphor regarding food doesn't work, because that has obvious effects in other ways, such as health. Eat the addictive crap over the nutritional but boring food, and your doctor will have cause to worry. Enjoyment of a video game exists only in the mind though, so there really isn't any difference between enjoying a game and being "tricked" into enjoying a game.
True that. I tried the LucasArts mega pack not too long ago, with all the stuff I remembered from when I was a kid, and...urgh. Sam & Max is still really funny, but holy shit as a game it is awful. Right from the height of the adventure-games-that-make-no-damn-sense boom.Violator[xL said:
Because they were tired of the money, drugs, fame and groupies. They wanted to go back to selling shoes.rob_simple said:
![Violator[xL]](https://eg-forums-escapist-data.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/24/24558.jpg?1620210777){kind=avatar}
Besides, when I started, there wasn't this thing called 'Free to play'. Nowadays, really wonderful games are being released that can be played for free, and when you decide to invest, you can choose in what character/weapon/thong.
ISN'T THAT GREAT? I think it is.
ISN'T THAT GREAT? I think it is.
You know it doesn't even hurt!Zhukov said:
OT: Its really not as bad as people make out, sure some developers have had some minor hiccups, and some game series have gone in new directions, but thats what keeps things interesting and fresh. If Hitman 4 was the exact same as Hitman 1 we'd all complain that they never did anythng new!
There is such a thing as evil game design, basically things designed to be addictive, not fun.
broadly speaking its anything that resembles a casino.
MMO's of course are the biggest offenders.
but more games try to incorporate these element to increase "Fun" aka sells, there's no room for failure anymore.
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saying nothing good comes out anymore is basically people just getting to old for games or just over simplifying.
but saying "downloading a ten year old game and see for how long you actually enjoy it (the first ten minutes do not count, nostalgia will die out after that)." offends me on so many levels.
everybody walks around saying "oh video games are art, video games are art."
what the FUCK kinda art stops being valid after only 10 FUCKING YEARS!!!!
That's like saying any movie ,book ,painting, or song made before 2003 is shit. and has no value to society.
more than any other reason ^^^^this^^^ kinda thinking is why we don't have a healthy middle ground between indegames and AAA.
broadly speaking its anything that resembles a casino.
MMO's of course are the biggest offenders.
but more games try to incorporate these element to increase "Fun" aka sells, there's no room for failure anymore.
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saying nothing good comes out anymore is basically people just getting to old for games or just over simplifying.
but saying "downloading a ten year old game and see for how long you actually enjoy it (the first ten minutes do not count, nostalgia will die out after that)." offends me on so many levels.
everybody walks around saying "oh video games are art, video games are art."
what the FUCK kinda art stops being valid after only 10 FUCKING YEARS!!!!
That's like saying any movie ,book ,painting, or song made before 2003 is shit. and has no value to society.
more than any other reason ^^^^this^^^ kinda thinking is why we don't have a healthy middle ground between indegames and AAA.
Just because you don't find something to be fun doesn't mean others can't find it fun. Personally, I can't stand bullet hell games. They're noisy, graphical clusterfucks with difficulty curves designed by Satan himself. But I have some friends who absolutely come alive when they play them. They get completely engrossed and get more excited than a 10 year old on a rollercoaster.noreshadow said:
I played an MMO for a long time and I loved it. Yes it's tedious and takes time, but it's rather like gardening in that way. You get to watch something grow and develop over time, and the more time you put into it the more it'll grow. But unlike a garden, in a game you can use that extra growth to explore new places, discover new plots in the story, and in general just do whatever you want to do.
If that's not your thing, then whatever. I'm not going to say you're wrong for not liking it, because you're not. But where you are absolutely dead wrong is this arrogant assumption of yours that "Well I don't like it, so clearly it's just bad game design."
I was not talking about bad game design
I was talking about games designed by psychological study, not crafted with artistic intent.
basically games modeled after a Skinner Box
as an indie game designer i have a strong belief that this kinda practice is morally reprehensible. and the only real thing I see blatantly wrong with modern games.
I'm not bashing MMO's on a conceptual level. its just tactics they commonly use to keep people playing, often at a detriment to there own lives.
The Idea of games that incorporate a sense of society ,or incorporate a real sence of growth in a living evolving world is awesome.
Sadly no game can compete against these kinda designs and still turn a profit, thus why EVERY MMO incorporates them, and more and more games in different genera are using them.
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when you play games, stop and ask yourself. "why is it harder and harder to level up? why doesn't every boar drop meat? why do i have to log off in a town?"
hint: Its not to make a more enjoyable game or compelling story.
the answer is somebody is fucking with your head to get you to give them money.
I was talking about games designed by psychological study, not crafted with artistic intent.
basically games modeled after a Skinner Box
as an indie game designer i have a strong belief that this kinda practice is morally reprehensible. and the only real thing I see blatantly wrong with modern games.
I'm not bashing MMO's on a conceptual level. its just tactics they commonly use to keep people playing, often at a detriment to there own lives.
The Idea of games that incorporate a sense of society ,or incorporate a real sence of growth in a living evolving world is awesome.
Sadly no game can compete against these kinda designs and still turn a profit, thus why EVERY MMO incorporates them, and more and more games in different genera are using them.
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when you play games, stop and ask yourself. "why is it harder and harder to level up? why doesn't every boar drop meat? why do i have to log off in a town?"
hint: Its not to make a more enjoyable game or compelling story.
the answer is somebody is fucking with your head to get you to give them money.
Ok i'll admit. Some of these systems, if used in moderation, can actually help tell a narrative. or craft a genuinely better game.
but that's not whats going on.
If a company puts sugar in there food, that's ok.
If a company puts methamphetamine in there food, that's not ok.
I've seen too many friends that have ruined relationships, lost jobs, or generally failed to live up to there potential because of games.
Yet I LOVE video games on an intellectual level, I love to make video games, I appreciate games as art.
to bring it full circle to my original point.
if games are art, than why are games that are only 6-10 years old un-playable?
but that's not whats going on.
If a company puts sugar in there food, that's ok.
If a company puts methamphetamine in there food, that's not ok.
I've seen too many friends that have ruined relationships, lost jobs, or generally failed to live up to there potential because of games.
Yet I LOVE video games on an intellectual level, I love to make video games, I appreciate games as art.
to bring it full circle to my original point.
if games are art, than why are games that are only 6-10 years old un-playable?
The reason I assert that the death of EA and Activision would bring everyone down with them is simple; Shareholders.BreakfastMan said:
If EA and Activision collapsed, shareholders of the other publishers would run for the hills, selling all of their stock just in case they were about to lose their investment. Because, if the two biggest publihers folded, it would be justified to be afraid that the industry was collapsing.
It's how any market collapses. Take for example, banks. People watch the big banks for signs of trends, even if their investment is in a smaller bank. If the trend looks like imminent collapse, they panic and sell, and then the imminent collapse becomes reality.
Publishers couldn't publish so much as a fart without their shareholders.
You do know that Bethesda and Valve are not a publicly traded companies, right? And that the video-game industry is nothing like the banking industry?Rachmaninov said:
I didn't. Do you think Bethesda and Valve would keep the AAA gaming market alive between them, if all the others collapsed?BreakfastMan said:
I don't.
It's like the banking industry in that games publishers use stockholder money to do business and that without stockholder money they can't do business. And it's like the banking industry in that investors will watch the big publishers for signs of trends, and react accordingly. Like my example suggested.BreakfastMan said:
Is that all you've got to say? To point out the dissimilarities rather than address the point?
In many ways, I think this is the best gamers have ever had it.
Sure, there's a lot of mediocre, homogenized crap out there but, fuck, that's always been the case. Go out and buy a random SNES or Megadrive game you've never heard of, I bet it ends up being a crummy 2D platformer. There are just as many utterly fantastic games being made now as there ever were, both AAA and indie, and if it seems like we aren't getting that many, it's because we never really did.
On top of the fact that there are still amazing games being made we also have access to decades of classic games, some of which are even easier to obtain now than they were at release. My family couldn't afford Phantasy Star IV when I was a kid and it was rare that you'd ever come across it. Now it's available on Steam for about £2 or in that pack of 40 SEGA games for about a tenner. Then there's services like GOG for old PC games, Virtual Console on Nintendo's systems, PS1 classics on PSN, etc.
There are definitely problems, but I've played so many wonderful games this last generation, both new and old, that I really can't say gaming is dying for me. I'm not saying that we shouldn't speak out against practices that we find shady or games we don't feel are up to par, but this generation's been a damn good 7 years.
Sure, there's a lot of mediocre, homogenized crap out there but, fuck, that's always been the case. Go out and buy a random SNES or Megadrive game you've never heard of, I bet it ends up being a crummy 2D platformer. There are just as many utterly fantastic games being made now as there ever were, both AAA and indie, and if it seems like we aren't getting that many, it's because we never really did.
On top of the fact that there are still amazing games being made we also have access to decades of classic games, some of which are even easier to obtain now than they were at release. My family couldn't afford Phantasy Star IV when I was a kid and it was rare that you'd ever come across it. Now it's available on Steam for about £2 or in that pack of 40 SEGA games for about a tenner. Then there's services like GOG for old PC games, Virtual Console on Nintendo's systems, PS1 classics on PSN, etc.
There are definitely problems, but I've played so many wonderful games this last generation, both new and old, that I really can't say gaming is dying for me. I'm not saying that we shouldn't speak out against practices that we find shady or games we don't feel are up to par, but this generation's been a damn good 7 years.
All others? Including the ones that are owned by foreign investors and/or do a lot of business over seas? And the ones that are not exclusively game companies? Or the ones that appeal to genres and niches that Activision and EA don't?Rachmaninov said:
The dissimilarities (of which there are many) are the point. They are the reason why your analogy, and any assertions that you make that are based on that analogy, don't work.
SonicWaffle. Who're you talking to? You didn't quote anyone :| I think you may be going a bit funny in the old brainwaffles.SonicWaffle said:
OT:
No, gaming isn't dying. You've got Valve and Naughty Dog and Insomniac and Frictional and Bethesda and whoever the fuck your favourite devs are, all churning out some awesome games. Obviously EA make completely pants on head fucking retarded decisions regarding the various IPs they have chained in their basements. That's what they do. Ignore them and move on.
At no point did someone say there is no validity or, value to society in games older then 10 years old. What they are saying is trends in design of media changes in an ergonomic way, such as games have adapted to play in a way that is a more pleasing experience. Take for instance user interface construction, text design (placement, speed, kerning, legibility, interaction), character input controls (those from the user, and those from the programming), overall aesthetic design. The list literally goes on indefinitely on ways future iterations are developing to be superior in terms of how the user interacts.noreshadow said:
"everybody walks around saying "oh video games are art, video games are art."
what the FUCK kinda art stops being valid after only 10 FUCKING YEARS!!!!", -Noreshadow
Do you have a good grasp of history? You do realize that art; as well as just about everything else, but art for this discussion changes pretty rapidly in order to fit the the mood/ zeitgeist that is current. And in many ways tries to in some ways contradict what has come before. I'm not saying that it in anyway changes validity but theirs a reason everyone right now isn't painting in a fabulous Rocco manner and sculpting voluptuous figures.
The point being were not discussing validity, were talking ergonomic engineering of games old games don't become shit in anyway, their necessary. But in looking back we can easily see the design flaws only present in hindsight.
It doesn't matter which genres and niches publisher's games appeal to, because we're not talking about all of the publishers failing to sell games, we're talking about the publishers losing their shareholders.BreakfastMan said:
Big investors in companies like these don't just sit on their hands, watching the stock value go up and down, they look for trends. And the best place to find trends, is in the bigger versions of the company you're invested in.
If EA and Activision's stock starts to rise, it's fair to think that you'll see a rise all across the industry.
If EA and Activision blow up, it's fair to expect everyone to lose money. It doesn't matter if the investors are foreign, because EA and Activsion are the trend-setters globally.
It'd be nice if you stopped saying "It doesn't work!" and start telling me why you think that's the case.BreakfastMan said:
Do you think publicly traded publishers can survive if their shareholders abandoned them wholesale?
Do you think shareholders with an investment in a small-medium size publisher would be unconcerned by the two largest publishers collapsing?
Give me some more information here.
And also, just in case you were interested, the industry has collapsed before [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983] and that was largely the result of the collapse of only one company, instead of two; Atari.
AAA gaming is going through some rough spots right now, and definitely NOT growing-pains...
But there are good games outside of AAA.
I don't see gaming "dying", just trying to cope with a period of exploitation.
But there are good games outside of AAA.
I don't see gaming "dying", just trying to cope with a period of exploitation.
Yes, it does matter. Troma is not going to close if Paramount or Warner Brothers close. Why? Because Troma appeals to a niche that Warner Brothers and Paramount do not. People aren't going to stop buying Troma films if they can't get Paramount films anymore.Rachmaninov said:
This makes the assumption that all publishers are the same and focus their energy on putting out the same games, which is clearly not the case.
Not really. It depends on the reasons the stock is going up. If Activision's stock is increasing because people are buying more games in general, then it is fine to assume that everyone else's stock price is going to go up. If Activisions stock is increasing because it made another billion off of COD, it is ridiculous to assume that 2K, for instance, will get a boost to its stock, simply because someone else's stock went up.
Fine, if you want me to spell it out to you, I will.
Differences between banks and video game publishers:
-Video game publishers sell products, while banks offer services.
-Banks are highly connected to each other through trading of mortgages and securities. Video game publishers are not nearly as tightly connected.
-Banks depend on highly volatile sectors of the economy, housing loans, for a good chunk of revenue. Video game publishers are not.
-Banks sell the same thing. I can get a savings account, a checking account, or a home loan from any bank I set foot in. By comparison, I cannot get an FPS, a sports game, or an RPG at every publisher I get to.
-There is little variation between services that the banks sell. By contrast, there is massive variation between products that video game publishers sell.
-Banks make most of their money through investments. Video game publishers make most of their money from selling products.
Doubtful, but we really aren't talking about shareholders abandoning all publishers, are we?
Some would, others would not.
That was because the industry was reliant on Atari for consoles themselves. Completely different situation.