Poll: Gaming Industry

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Total Industrialisation of Gaming, disillusion?

In about like 15 years we passed from one side to the other: our forefathers considered that consoles were toys and therefore obsolete...
then came the pioneers of consoles:
the developers were animated by passion, whose average age was very young, the press was marked by a certain idealism, and players had a sense of belonging to a community apart, not recognized (or even sometimes known) by the general public.

the videogame as minor art, who was considered as a foreign strange invading asian technology and aggressive during his most "creative" period, is now the equal of the 7th Art in the eyes of the general public while the originality and daring seems to retreat.

The conflicting reports from independent publishers and CEO's show the difficulty of creating today.

To what extent the Internet and the recent technological advances have radically changed the habits of players? Including the size of the solo game, more and more cast aside...
Microsoft and Sony have they changed the deal by monopolizing a world that was not theirs?

What happened to the time when a game was an artwork in its own right? The work of a life sometimes, to its designer!

What has changed now that we became from the outcasts to the new cash cows for an industry that reveals itself as the most profitable?

 

[Worgen]

really if anything games have become a bit less industrilized, in the early days alot of publishers didnt even want devs names on games so no one could head hunt them and because they considered the makers to be about as important as the guys putting the carts together, the barrier for a company to make entry into games wasnt as big as it can be now but individual developers have never had an easier time making or getting thier games out as they have now.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

really if anything games have become a bit less industrilized, in the early days alot of publishers didnt even want devs names on games so no one could head hunt them and because they considered the makers to be about as important as the guys putting the carts together, the barrier for a company to make entry into games wasnt as big as it can be now but individual developers have never had an easier time making or getting thier games out as they have now.

huh that's for devs who wish to make indie games mostly... have you seen Free Radical, or another developer being helped while struggling? shouldn't there be some solidarity between gamemakers? or is it the Law of the end that justifies the means?

and those who can make it resist, and those who lack money/contacts disappear.

 

[Worgen]

really if anything games have become a bit less industrilized, in the early days alot of publishers didnt even want devs names on games so no one could head hunt them and because they considered the makers to be about as important as the guys putting the carts together, the barrier for a company to make entry into games wasnt as big as it can be now but individual developers have never had an easier time making or getting thier games out as they have now.

huh that's for devs who wish to make indie games mostly... have you seen Free Radical, or another developer being helped while struggling? shouldn't there be some solidarity between gamemakers? or is it the Law of the end that justifies the means?

and those who can make it resist, and those who lack money/contacts disappear.

really how is that diffrent from the early days?

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

i'm not saying the early days weren't hard neither, i'm just saying that you could start from scratch. and then i added that there should be cooperation between developers.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Well, it's much more profitbale now, so there are more people who are in it to make money rather than just to make art.

On the flip side, more people are willing to make art if they realise they can be re-imbursed for it, so what's happening is you get both a very "make another one like that but better" and a "Take your time, we're making art here, people". It's almost like the movie industry, if the movies power players were groups of people instead of one single person.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

In many ways the mega publishers are inefficient and very bad at making new games. They leave a lot of space for smaller fish to grow but then they end up swallowing them. What we need to do is start breeding fish out of antimatter so that every time a mega publisher fish swallows a smaller game making fish there is a matter-antimatter explosion that damages both the game industry and fish metaphors.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

In many ways the mega publishers are inefficient and very bad at making new games. They leave a lot of space for smaller fish to grow but then they end up swallowing them. What we need to do is start breeding fish out of antimatter so that every time a mega publisher fish swallows a smaller game making fish there is a matter-antimatter explosion that damages both the game industry and fish metaphors.

so how do you do that ?

 

[disfunkybob]

In many ways the mega publishers are inefficient and very bad at making new games. They leave a lot of space for smaller fish to grow but then they end up swallowing them. What we need to do is start breeding fish out of antimatter so that every time a mega publisher fish swallows a smaller game making fish there is a matter-antimatter explosion that damages both the game industry and fish metaphors.

so how do you do that ?

By killing all the fish, giving Peter Molyneux even more money and just forgetting this ever happened.

 

[Thaius]

The same thing that happened to the movie industry. There are some people who do it just to make money, which fulfills Sturgeon's Law. But just because there's more crap out there doesn't mean there's less creativity. Even some of the franchises that have been around forever continue to be inspired (Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, is hardly a rehash of its predecessors). Creativity and art in games is thriving: you're just seeing the crap around it and thinking things are bad. There may be more crap, but there's a lot of creativity too: the ratio is still about the same.

 

[ultrachicken]

I see no problem with the gaming industry that isn't a problem with any other industry.
They try to appeal to the majority, and if that isn't you, than that's too bad, but you don't get more rights than the majority.

 

[Veylon]

I think the train's already left the station on this one. It looks to me like we're heading towards the post-Industrial gaming. More individuals and small groups than ever are making their own games and can sell them online without needing the backing of big distributors. Older games are reappearing on the digital shelves of Good Old Games. Nintendo made a near-clean break with tradition and racked in major cash with the innovative Wii.

The Total Industrialism model requires the ability to control the market space, and with the internet the market space is unlimited. The big companies are facing more competition than ever, and yet show ever less creativity. They're due for a shake-up as their profits ebb away.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

The same thing that happened to the movie industry. There are some people who do it just to make money, which fulfills Sturgeon's Law. But just because there's more crap out there doesn't mean there's less creativity. Even some of the franchises that have been around forever continue to be inspired (Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, is hardly a rehash of its predecessors). Creativity and art in games is thriving: you're just seeing the crap around it and thinking things are bad. There may be more crap, but there's a lot of creativity too: the ratio is still about the same.

The Final Fantasy example is a good one because as with all media art theres customer demand and branding. Familiarity is important to the customer and therefore the artist/director/designer need a middle ground, making something new will alienate people such as Final Fantasy XIII has where as art without change will stagnate and thus alienate your fans still. Making art costs money and the customers decide what they spend it on.

 

[Thaius]

The same thing that happened to the movie industry. There are some people who do it just to make money, which fulfills Sturgeon's Law. But just because there's more crap out there doesn't mean there's less creativity. Even some of the franchises that have been around forever continue to be inspired (Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, is hardly a rehash of its predecessors). Creativity and art in games is thriving: you're just seeing the crap around it and thinking things are bad. There may be more crap, but there's a lot of creativity too: the ratio is still about the same.

The Final Fantasy example is a good one because as with all media art theres customer demand and branding. Familiarity is important to the customer and therefore the artist/director/designer need a middle ground, making something new will alienate people such as Final Fantasy XIII has where as art without change will stagnate and thus alienate your fans still. Making art costs money and the customers decide what they spend it on.

I actually like the way Final Fantasy does it. Each entry will be a completely different, wholly disconnected game that stands alone, independent of the others (unless its an expressly noted spinoff, like Crisis Core or X-2 of course). Each game also changes the battle system: even when they used the Active Time system for a while, they changed all the stuff surrounding its setup and character customization (the part of a JRPG battle system that really matters anyway). But fans do know that, when a new Final Fantasy game comes out, they can expect a good story, strategic turn-based gameplay, great visual presentation, a good soundtrack (the best if Uematsu is involved), and a 50+ hour fantasy/sci-fi epic. Familiarity in that we know basically what it will bring to the table, but novelty in that we do not know exactly how.

Of course that doesn't work for everything: if Master Chief was nowhere to be found in Halo 2, or if you didn't play as Snake in one of the main Metal Gear Solid games (wait...), that would just be annoying. But point being, Square Enix manages to keep that particular franchise fresh while still clinging to what makes the series great. Some of their more experimental moves haven't worked as well lately, but it's to be expected: it's not their first slow spell.

Didn't mean to turn this conversation into a Final Fantasy rant, just noting how the series uses these concepts. You have some good stuff to say, Veldt.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

The same thing that happened to the movie industry. There are some people who do it just to make money, which fulfills Sturgeon's Law. But just because there's more crap out there doesn't mean there's less creativity. Even some of the franchises that have been around forever continue to be inspired (Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, is hardly a rehash of its predecessors). Creativity and art in games is thriving: you're just seeing the crap around it and thinking things are bad. There may be more crap, but there's a lot of creativity too: the ratio is still about the same.

The Final Fantasy example is a good one because as with all media art theres customer demand and branding. Familiarity is important to the customer and therefore the artist/director/designer need a middle ground, making something new will alienate people such as Final Fantasy XIII has where as art without change will stagnate and thus alienate your fans still. Making art costs money and the customers decide what they spend it on.

I actually like the way Final Fantasy does it. Each entry will be a completely different, wholly disconnected game that stands alone, independent of the others (unless its an expressly noted spinoff, like Crisis Core or X-2 of course). Each game also changes the battle system: even when they used the Active Time system for a while, they changed all the stuff surrounding its setup and character customization (the part of a JRPG battle system that really matters anyway). But fans do know that, when a new Final Fantasy game comes out, they can expect a good story, strategic turn-based gameplay, great visual presentation, a good soundtrack (the best if Uematsu is involved), and a 50+ hour fantasy/sci-fi epic. Familiarity in that we know basically what it will bring to the table, but novelty in that we do not know exactly how.

Of course that doesn't work for everything: if Master Chief was nowhere to be found in Halo 2, or if you didn't play as Snake in one of the main Metal Gear Solid games (wait...), that would just be annoying. But point being, Square Enix manages to keep that particular franchise fresh while still clinging to what makes the series great. Some of their more experimental moves haven't worked as well lately, but it's to be expected: it's not their first slow spell.

Didn't mean to turn this conversation into a Final Fantasy rant, just noting how the series uses these concepts. You have some good stuff to say, Veldt.

I'm one that can't stand the ignorant who say they're all the same and MGS2 is another great example that I forgot about though Master Chef isn't in ODST and Reach is he? I dunno thanks for the compliment and the little debuff humour though.

 

[Kollega]

I do not think so. Publishers are not able to control everything - there are bedroom programmers, games made on Flash, etc. Therefore, total industrialization of gaming is currently impossible.

 

[Pingieking]

I think the train's already left the station on this one. It looks to me like we're heading towards the post-Industrial gaming. More individuals and small groups than ever are making their own games and can sell them online without needing the backing of big distributors. Older games are reappearing on the digital shelves of Good Old Games. Nintendo made a near-clean break with tradition and racked in major cash with the innovative Wii.

The Total Industrialism model requires the ability to control the market space, and with the internet the market space is unlimited. The big companies are facing more competition than ever, and yet show ever less creativity. They're due for a shake-up as their profits ebb away.

Ah, yes, the innovative Wii. That one always makes me chuckle.

It's most likely good for the company's profit margins to go with less creativity. Scan over the best seller's list, and what you see are games that really didn't experiment with anything. SMBW was almost identical to all the other Mario 2D platformers, and the entire CoD franchise really hasn't changed a whole lot since it appeared on the consoles. It's the ones that really experiment that seem to have some trouble.

OT:
I think this is more of a console gaming problem. It looks like the accessibility of developers is inversely proportional to the accessibility of the gamers. People talk about how hard it is to game on the PC (due to technical and financial issues), but that platform is the one with the most activity. Consoles are great because you pop in a disk and go, but the developers have to basically go through giant publishers who determine what games will ever see the light of day.

 

[Veylon]

Ah, yes, the innovative Wii. That one always makes me chuckle.

I don't know whether you mean that sarcastically/ironically/sardonically or not, but it's enough of a departure to induce MILLIONs of non-gamers to suddenly rush out and buy a console. There is something seriously wrong with the gaming industry for the simple addition of a hand-waving-thing to have so great an effect. And now that that train has long, long since left the station, Sony and Microsoft both are both going to try and jump aboard. How desperate is the gaming industry for new ideas that every odd notion attracts a stampede of customers and companies?

 

[nick_knack]

I don't think you can totally industrialize any industry that relies so heavily on creative content.

 

[MurderousToaster]

I agree that most games these days revolve around shovelware, or at least 'stealing' concepts and ideas from other games. But that doesn't mean we're entering an age of cheap knock-offs. Games still require creativity to make them work, otherwise they will fail harder than anything on earth. Each game made requires some sort of creative work, otherwise it will fall utterly flat. I don't think it would be possible to completely convert gaming to an industrial industry.