Is gaming dead?

[kypsilon]

I'd like to see a complete AAA industry game crash. Nothing like a little armageddon once in a while to shake up the worst aspects of an industry and force some change...or at least a slow crawl back to the status-quo. That being said, kids today love the games coming out. They aren't saddled with the games of yesteryear in the same way that gamers who've had decades of great titles to fondly remember can be. I think the industry is being lazy, but my young niece just thinks the games are awesome. It's kind of weird to think that she'll look back on a certain set of games that I find repulsive, boring and uninspired as really awesome games. Perspective is everything here.

Yeah, there's nothing like tens of thousands of people losing their livelihoods because a few games have come out that you don't like.

Seriously, come on. The past generations were as full of as much shit as the current generations. Of course only a handful of games are going to be remembered decades from now--how many movies can you recall from several decades ago, compared to how many were actually made?

People are already losing their jobs. Mine included. Get off your horse.

As for my second point which you missed entirely was that games we look back on and say were better are better mostly by reason of nostalgia. As I said, my niece will grow up thinking some second rate Barbie game that someone churned out to cash in on an IP is awesome. I don't have a problem with that. But what the industry needs is for smaller game companies, the indie guys, to bring us back to that point where games were made because we as human beings needed to see where we could go with the medium, to try and push the boundaries of the tech.

 

[Something Amyss]

In this sense, the inert public response to the Wii U may foreshadow how people are going respond to the PS4 and next Xbox--with Ouya and Steambox being the possible beneficiaries.

If things come crashing downward, we may see a dearth of good corporate-produced titles for a few years--a kind of modern-day version of the E.T.-caused Atari crash of '83.

*sigh*

Okay, here's a couple problems, itemised for convenience.

1. Nintendo is mostly targeting a group that's unlikely to upgrade. They did so with a tablet controller that seems superfluous to most people based onthe notion that if motion sold last gen, knocking off tablets would go over like gangbusters! Except they did so with no major games and (again) at a market that probably doesn't care about the new hardware. They also ran the risk of being seen as competing with the tablet market, an already installed user base with cheaper games that can be played more flexibly.

2. There will never be another crash that resembles the 80s crash. One of the key problems with the 80s crash was the cost of production of games. The cartridges were hella expensive, even compared to BD. Standardised manufacture, established factories, and metrics will stop this from ever happening. We'd need an industry-wide equivalent of the uDraw to pull that off, and a lukewarm response o something like the Wii U is nowhere near that.

3 Ouya and "Steambox" are fare closer to a problem with the 80s crash. Both are designed to be open-source, and one isn't even a standard unit. Steambox hasn't even come out yet, and it's already got competitors. Brand competition from a lot of manufacturers and no control was one of the major issues that landed us a glut of shite games which dilluted the market.

So really, the people who stand to benefit from your 80s-style crash are historically part of the problem.

 

[Godhead]

Gaming's not dead. Innovation is still occurring today; it might not be as drastic as it was in the late nineties, but it still exists. I had gotten Starcraft 2 about two months after I had started playing the classic Starcraft and I enjoy 2 a lot more, not because it's brand new, but because it made tweaks to the original game and gave it a graphical overhaul. I love the fact that I now have a button to select every single non-worker unit in the game, and I love that as a zerg I can now just make a queen to help spread creep and make more larvae instead of making a lot of sunken colonies and 2-3 hatcheries per base. The innovation that shakes the foundations in how games are made occur a lot less than they have in the past, and that's fine. But as long as people are able to look at a formula and say 'I don't need to make a new formula as long as I can tweak it to make it work better for me' then that's a more than reasonable thing to accept.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

[quote="EzraPound" post="9.407643.17010972"
Bad news abounds: Nintendo, one of the greatest of all design firms, looks like it's on the verge w crisis. [/quote]

And ya lost me, if Nintendo is your yard stick of quality, then im going to tell you to get a better stick. Nintendo hasn't been good in YEARS.

 

[josemlopes]

1) Is re-democratization really good, though? It seems to be that what made the fifth generation so special was the combination of financial accessibility and corporate finesse. Now we have creative mobile games that can't be so ambitious on account of the limited resources possessed by their creators, and boring high-budge games, but very little in-between.

Im going to say to expect that to change, a lot of devs now are doing smaller budget games in between their bigger titles for the purpose of trying something diferent while avoiding a huge risk, such devs are Avalanche (Renegade Ops), Ubisoft (Far Cry Blood Dragon), Techland (Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger), etc...

These guys are using their already made AAA tech to make cheap games in between their big releases and I expect this trend to become bigger (Far Cry Blood Dragon made a shitload of sales). And instead of cheap mediocre games you get top quality cheap games, you arent just depending on indie devs for the 10$/15$ game anymore.

 

[Auron]

I'd like to see a complete AAA industry game crash. Nothing like a little armageddon once in a while to shake up the worst aspects of an industry and force some change...or at least a slow crawl back to the status-quo. That being said, kids today love the games coming out. They aren't saddled with the games of yesteryear in the same way that gamers who've had decades of great titles to fondly remember can be. I think the industry is being lazy, but my young niece just thinks the games are awesome. It's kind of weird to think that she'll look back on a certain set of games that I find repulsive, boring and uninspired as really awesome games. Perspective is everything here.

Yeah, there's nothing like tens of thousands of people losing their livelihoods because a few games have come out that you don't like.

Seriously, come on. The past generations were as full of as much shit as the current generations. Of course only a handful of games are going to be remembered decades from now--how many movies can you recall from several decades ago, compared to how many were actually made?

Pretty much what she said, people seem to forget games like Superman 64, Jurassic Park on the MegaDrive, every other movie and comic game(sans Arkham and some Spiderman games.) ever, Bible Adventures, Mario is Missing, Street Fighter the movie the game, every CD-I game, most Sega CD games, TMNT on the nes, 90% of the games the angry nintendo nerd reviewed... And man it goes on.

I close up the argument with this more eloquent and demonstrative bit by Jim Sterling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWHHlnbZOYQ

 

[briankoontz]

Opinion/ possible nostalgia goggles aside...there is definitely a case to be made that the quality of games has declined. Contemporary games are, on average, shorter (single player: 5-12 hours), less replayable (in terms of content/gameplay) and, for better or worse, more "streamlined" in their mechanics. Sure, on the other hand, the quality of things like graphics and voice-acting has gone up...but that's an improvement in breadth (technology), not depth (design).

That's just the AAA market, a subset of that market, that you're referring to.

A case can be made that the quality of AAA games has gone down, especially with respect to the length of games, with Max Payne being a vanguard of the industry decline in that regard, and the simplification of interface and game mechanics caused partly by the success of click-fests like Diablo and more importantly by more developers developing for both PC and consoles.

But the tremendous rise in all other markets besides AAA has made the AAA market relatively unimportant, and many games are still made with dozens of hours of content.

The streamlining of game mechanics has been good for gaming as a whole, helping bring it to the masses. I love complicated games but one reason (the other major one being the democratization of high technology like digital distribution) gaming has become so popular and there's now such creativity in game development is that developers have focused so much on making their games easy to play. And this opinion comes from a guy who calls Skyrim an Action/RPG and wishes The Elder Scrolls had remained a hard-core RPG series while Bethesda could have formed a new IP for their streamlined Action/RPG desires.

 

[VoidWanderer]

No, Gaming is not coming to an end. And I don't think it will, unless indie games are driven out by the larger companies. While Nintendo's future is hazy at the moment, that may coming to a crashing halt, unless they pull an ace out of the hole. Given the greater possibilities due to the increased RAM of the next-gen consoles (The WiiU doesn't count), I think that gaming will actually improve as the restrictions they are currently in will be significantly reduced.

The main reason for the crash in '83 is due to the total dominance in a VERY young medium, but it has grown to be truly self-sufficient.

I am not worried about the future of gaming, but I am concerned for Nintendo and the AAA survival horror genre however.

 

[Xdeser2]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Alright, let me explain. This generation has seen a HUGE number of extremely good games, and, what a shocker this is, some people like them some people dont. Its all subjective. If you strictly like what gaming was in the 90's then yes, its a decline. But if anything, its far more diverse than it used to be.

And, do you know the funny part? Past generations have had just as much crap and shovelware as this one. Its not as if were in some unique gaming apocalypse. Remember the C64, NES, SNES, PSX, PS2 and Original Xobx (and yes, PC gamers, you're included here too)? Please tell me how many of those games you truly remember, and I'll guarantee you that there were 10 games considered subpar, shitty, or outright shovelware for every great one.

 

[Olas]

Yes, gaming is dead.

It's all over. The market is dried up. There will never be another game made or sold ever again. This site might as well be shut down and Yahtzee should start looking for work as a plumber or something. All because we hit a slow period following a few underwhelming releases. That was all it took to destroy gaming forever.

[/sarcasm]

Actually I'd say there's plenty of cause to be optimistic, if the industry does go through a sort of crash it'll probably cause a reshaping of the industry with different/smarter business models, fewer big names dominating everything, and more democratization. Anyway, the idea that a lucrative market with a consumer demand like the gaming industry simply dying makes no sense.

I don't think it's even possible to kill the gaming industry. You could make games illegal and ban them in every country; an underground market for them would form overnight to subvert your efforts. You can't stop the signal.

 

[Phlakes]

...No. Can we stop making these threads now? If you have to ask, the answer is no. If gaming really does die there'll be just a little bit more going on than layoffs and some falling stocks.

 

[Another]

Certainly not. Even if another crash were to happen, gaming would pick right back up, like it did last time. And the time before that. History's shown that gaming isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

I didn't mean literally--just whether it's going to recover from its current creative nadir, or whether a new crash will instate terrible games as the norm.

Except terrible games are not the norm. Maybe it is because I am highly selective of my games, or maybe it is because I buy a lot of stuff from the currently very creative rich indie scene, but I don't see a creative slump for gaming as a whole. What I do see is that trends have shifted from big companies making complex creative games to smaller companies making complex creative games.

Honestly, I feel this is what happens when a medium shifts to a more mainstream audience. For a movie analogy, your creatively bankrupt, highly popular Call of Duty games and such are the creatively bankrupt, highly popular Dumb Summer Blockbuster, smaller movies are your mid tier games (admittedly the mid-tier dev studio has been somewhat gutted this gen), and indie games are your indie movies. Same pattern follows with books and music.

Will gaming die? No.

Will gaming be terrible? Sometimes, but that has always been the case.

Will things change and shift? Yep, and I think that is what is causing some panic for people. People don't like change for better or worse. In the future you may have to look harder for a really great gem of a game, but that doesn't mean that they won't be there.

And that's not even mentioning the potential for a shift back to old trends. I was just reading a few articles on Gamesutra analyzing what was popular in games last year and what trends may be making a comeback. They included some promising things: survival, harder difficulty, turn-based strategy, and even permadeath (to a limited extent they say, as not everyone is game for that sort of thing). Course it also mentioned continuing MOBA and Minecraft cash-ins, but hey you win some and lose some.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Since I was about twelve years old--in 2001--gaming has visibly been in a state of decline.

Oh great, another one of these. "When I was young we blablabla" is never a good way to start any thread, or any discussion whatsoever. Okay gramps, go back to your old games and stop shaking your walking stick at us.

No, gaming isn't dead. Just because something has changed and you don't like it as much anymore doesn't mean that it's dead.

And I couldn't help but notice that this OP sounds just as smug as the previous thread I saw you start ----> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.407495-Does-anyone-else-find-plot-twists-in-games-gimmicky#17002125

 

[Manji187]

Opinion/ possible nostalgia goggles aside...there is definitely a case to be made that the quality of games has declined. Contemporary games are, on average, shorter (single player: 5-12 hours), less replayable (in terms of content/gameplay) and, for better or worse, more "streamlined" in their mechanics. Sure, on the other hand, the quality of things like graphics and voice-acting has gone up...but that's an improvement in breadth (technology), not depth (design).

That's just the AAA market, a subset of that market, that you're referring to.

A case can be made that the quality of AAA games has gone down, especially with respect to the length of games, with Max Payne being a vanguard of the industry decline in that regard, and the simplification of interface and game mechanics caused partly by the success of click-fests like Diablo and more importantly by more developers developing for both PC and consoles.

But the tremendous rise in all other markets besides AAA has made the AAA market relatively unimportant, and many games are still made with dozens of hours of content.

The streamlining of game mechanics has been good for gaming as a whole, helping bring it to the masses. I love complicated games but one reason (the other major one being the democratization of high technology like digital distribution) gaming has become so popular and there's now such creativity in game development is that developers have focused so much on making their games easy to play. And this opinion comes from a guy who calls Skyrim an Action/RPG and wishes The Elder Scrolls had remained a hard-core RPG series while Bethesda could have formed a new IP for their streamlined Action/RPG desires.

Yes, I was referring to the AAA market. I only know of three markets: the AAA, the indie and the casual market. In your view, are there others?

I don't see how the "tremendous" rise in "all other markets" has made the AAA "relatively unimportant". That is just too vague a statement. Relatively unimportant how? Also, just because the casual and indie markets are going strong lately does not mean we should just forget about the AAA market and its troubles.

Yes, streamlining has had its beneficial effects, bringing many new gamers to the fold. It has also brought disappointment in the form of games such as Dragon Age II, Final Fantasy XIII and Ninja Gaiden III. There is a loss of depth/ enjoyment if a game goes from "easy to learn, hard to master" to just easy to learn/ execute.

Also, the easier it is to be a total badass in gameplay...the harder it will be to convey a sense of weakness and accompanying growth story-wise. This is shown best by the new Tomb Raider. This is a design issue that may come up more often with the continuing streamlining of games.

What I'm saying is...streamlining is not a pure gain, it is offset by a subtle but substantial loss.

 

[Chris Tian]

This is a fact: most acclaimed games today are just shittier versions of games that came before them

Internet debating rule number 1. opinion equals fact.
All kidding aside, are you sure you know what the term "fact" means? Because you are using it very wrong.

Basically all your posts just say: "I liked gaming better fifteen years ago". You rephrase that as if it were facts, and to prove those "facts" you state your personal opinion of some games over the years, again as if they were facts.

There is just no way good or interessting discussion can come from that, especially because you do not once give examples why you think all those games of old were better than they are now

I've actually given specific examples repeatedly. And no, I don't think this is just 'subjective'--most lists of 'greatest games ever' disproportionately feature games from the fourth and fifth generations, and about one-third of the people on this thread have expressed a similar discontent to the one I'm describing. So evidently, this phenomenon isn't confined to me.

Some games are objectively better than others--it's not a very effective or thorough response to just claim everything is relative...

First of, most things are relative, just claiming "my opinion is obectively true" is neither effective nor thorough. That counts double for things as subjective as entertainemnt products, and if you call games art or creative products that is even more true by like 100x.

Your claim that some games are "objectively better than others" is just untrue, because there is no way to truly measure the objective value of a game.

Just because a few, or even alot, of people agree on something does not make it an objective truth. If you think that, than you do not know what objective and subjective means and where the difference is.

Even your argument neutralizes itself here. You say your opinions become objective because a few in this thread and some arbitrary lists agree with you; that makes no sense.
Wouldnt't, by that logic, the opinion of the majority count as objective?
If not, it would still be you who decides what sources combined judge the "objective" value of a game.
And because you just pick the sources that agree with your opinion, it would be utterly subjective again.

How many people like it is the only "objective"(ish) standart you could measure a game by. And that would make CoD the best game of all times, every game in the "objective top 100" would eclipse every game you mentioned and they would all have been released in the past few years.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I think i made my feelings obvious in one of your previous threads on 'artsy' games so i won't bother dragging any of that back up. I will however comment on a few things i've noticed in gaming from this generation.

Most of my friends now spend more time playing indie games than big titles and the reason for that is the big games of today are mostly just clones of classics with a hint of something different...that generally makes the game easier to complete. I loved thief when it came out, dishonoured though had magical teleport abilities that fly in the face of stealth. Thief took me a month to finish, dishonoured took me 1 session.

The PC players i know only pay for 1 full game...World of Warcraft. Everything else is pirated with the odd exception of games like Minecraft or with super cheap classics re-released on Steam that they remember fondly but never actually bother playing once purchasing. People, it seems to me, are more willing to pay money for older games rather than the new ones and though the reason isn't obvious, the assumption is that new games lack the quality of older ones, despite having better graphics and more money spent on them.

My console gaming friends are all getting bored of the same old games and have moved from purchasing games to renting them or getting cheap second hand games...this includes me. 40 quid a game used to seem reasonable when a game would take a week to finish but 40 quid for less than a days gameplay just doesn't wash anymore. If they remove the ability to lend/rent games on the next generation (as has been hinted at in the past) then there is a good chance that my console friends will turn to pirating PC games and playing there instead, still adding no money to games developers.

When me and my friends gather for a piss-up at someones house we don't really play any new games but stick to old school music games or the odd beat-em-up...new titles are far too online multiplayer oriented to be any fun for a group of 6-8 drinkers. Even single player games that are easilly passable to the next person are becoming harder to find. Nowadays you really need to play the tutorial to get any sort of understanding of what can and cant be done within the game world and having to watch minutes of cut-scenes really destroys the fun. Trials HD and Peggle end up dominating when rock band and guitar hero have worn us out...new games don't stand a chance.

I'm not entirely sure what conclusions i can draw from these trends i've noticed. Certainly the games industry has stagnated in terms of innovating gameplay but i think the practices they now use to fail to deal with piracy are seriously harming their revenue stream. They try to put second hand games companies out of business and they kill off part of their new games sales. They try to make you have to play online all the time and alienate anyone who doesn't have internet access. They make the single player campaign so short and easy that single player gamers have nothing to gain by purchasing their product. It's 1 big giant mess that only a few companies are actually doing anything about and they will be the big winners overall.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Yes, gaming is dead. Gabe Newell made the announcement last month. Sony and Microsoft will pull the plug any day now and everyone else is already packed up. Didn't you get the memo?

 

[nettkenneth]

Personally i won't say that gaming as an idea Isn't dying and good games still come out but since there is a game slump where sales aren't really matching up witch in turn makes companies take less risks and we are not really helping since we take less risks with our money, so i think companies must reinvent themselves to make lower budget games and a tighter focus and reach out to core gamers instead of alienating us.

in general i think the 60 dollar AAA developing need to be cut back and maybe go more for 40 dollar releases since we really don't need expensive orchestral soundtrack or celebrity voice acting or in certain cases top tier graphics and to be honest it would be easier to spend 40 bucks on a game than 60. how many games have you thought "maybe when it is cheaper"

 

[NearLifeExperience]

Yes, gaming is dead. Gabe Newell made the announcement last month. Sony and Microsoft will pull the plug any day now and everyone else is already packed up. Didn't you get the memo?

I was going to post something similar to this, so thanks for screwing that up for me

 

[Toxic Sniper]

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are both better than Severance: Blade of Darkness (Yeah, I went there) and the King's Field series, so I don't see the problem.