Poll: What does the gaming industry need?

[RuralGamer]

On the off-chance that the poll doesn't work, I'll put the options at the bottom of this post, along with a short explanation of what I mean (obviously though my explanations will not entirely suite what you mean; please specify).

Simple question; what does the gaming industry need?

Recently there has been a lot of arguments over games that have come out within the last year or so and not lived up to expectations;
Dragon Age 2
Portal 2
Crysis 2
Mass Effect 2

These just to name a few (mmmm they all end in 2; I wonder if there's something here...); all four of these I've seen spark fierce debate over whether they are good, mediocre or downright criminally bad.
I've come to wonder whether the developers and their publishers are lacking somewhere; do you think so and if so, what is it and how should it be remedied?

Personally I'd say a combination of the first three options, with a heavy emphasis on more time; there are a couple of games I've played in recent years that feel, I wouldn't say unfinished, more unpolished; plus, there are some games I really like/want to like (such as KOTOR 2) that I've played over the years which were just lacking substance, despite being good otherwise.

What do you think?

Spoiler: More money

The industry doesn't have enough money to make games properly and so skimps on content; perhaps we should pay more on the condition games will be better

Spoiler: More time

Games are being rushed and as a result, their quality suffers; they need more time in the 'coding-womb' and more thorough testing; we need to be more patient and ready to give developers more time when they need it (strangely enough, this doesn't seem applicable to Valve; many always seems to give them more time...)

Spoiler: More innovation and willingness to experiment

The industry is far too afraid to take even small hops of faith in trying out new things and needs to be assured by the market that we want to see interesting concepts given a shot. More innovative people need to be brought in to make these games.

Spoiler: More realistic PR people and fewer big corporations

The PR people really need to tone down their overhype. EA, Activision and the like should be broken up into smaller, more competitive companies.

Spoiler: Nothing, everything is fine

Nothing is wrong with the industry; this has just been a slightly unsettled recent time and everything will be ok in a short while...

Spoiler: More of a combination of the above (please specify)

Several of the above answers are very valid

Spoiler: Both barrels and a swift burial (yay indie games!)

The gaming industry is dying out; casual and indie games made by people in their own home is the way to go!

Spoiler: Other (please specify)

What else would you suggest? I reckon I've likely missed some good ones, so let's hear 'em

 

[Stammer]

I oddly enough chose "Nothing, everything is fine". Larger developers and publishers may do a lot of selling out, but there's about an equal amount of stagnation in the gaming industry as there is in other media. Just as many games are "Mediocre" as there are movies, and just as many games are "hidden gems" as there are movies.

Forcing the industry to change in any way wouldn't accomplish anything. You could think of it as a "money can't buy happiness" argument in that if it weren't for the mediocrity and stagnation we wouldn't view any games at all as being really good. If every game were as good as Portal then Portal would simply be that specific level of mediocrity.

If you picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops (which by most critics standards is 'mediocre') 10 years ago and played it, it would have been the best game EVAR!

 

[Ice Car]

Combination of the above. Developers should spend more time on making their games and not do the same crap over and over again. Innovation. Take the time to make a quality game, which includes testing the game for bugs and glitching before release. (I'm looking at you Fallout.)

 

[DustyDrB]

Portal 2 and Mass Effect 2 got more praise than any other game I can think of, and they both deserve it. Not everyone likes them, but...do I really have to explain that?

Out of your list, I choice more time. I'm quite pleased with gaming lately, though.

 

[kasperbbs]

They do whatever they feel is neccesary to stay in business and who am i to say how they should do things, if i don`t like something i simply wont buy it and so will other people.

 

[ScoopMeister]

Crysis 2, Portal 2, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2? That sounds like a list of good games. If you want to talk about ones which sparked up debate, what about Halo: Reach and Black Ops? Those debates are still raging, and these games are pretty old now.

 

[veloper]

They need a smarter audience.

 

[GiantRaven]

Obviously, a combination of several choices would be the best situation but I picked the option for more time. Even if a game doesn't innovate at all, I still want the developers to work hard and make it the best it could possibly be before releasing it.

 

[Hitman Dread]

No the industry has enough money, that's not the issue here. Games already have budgets so high that it can make or break a company off one bad flop. In fact too much money is the true issue here.

We don't need to be pushing for the next graphical plateau. We need to be pushing for more efficient game development systems, because that's the next best thing to having everyone play games. If you lower development cost and thus lower risk, you increase everything that you could possibly want out of a video game. The amount of development time towards each product could increase, the amount of innovation could increase, the most of all, the amount of quality will increase.

Also I'd like to shoot down that list though, and use it to make a point.

If you think those games were poorly received then you might spend too much time on the internet. Spending enough time on the internet will convince you that everything today sucks and everything from the past is overrated. For everything there will always be a very loud voice of opposition on the internet, much larger than I saw prior too it's wide spread use.

Sadly though, the internet has also come to give people a false sense of knowledge about their hobbies, leading to unrealistic expectations for each project.

I'll use Marvel Versus Capcom 3 as an example here for both of the previous points.

Marvel Versus Capcom 3 was in development for 3 years, and the vast majority of that time was spent tackling the massive legal hurtles needed to be accomplished before actual development could begin. Now also consider how big a risk this title is for Capcom, fighting games are expensive to produce, have very high expectations from their core fan bases that the developers can not even fully predict until the game is in their hands, and do not sell as high as other games with lower development cost.

Despite this, the expectations for the game were beyond logic. Fans were appalled to see less charecters than the previous iteration, despite the poor balance of the last game and how not a single original sprite was drawn for the game. They also wanted a slew of modes on top of this, equilvant to TvC, which had much smaller development cost and a much smaller roster, allowing for more time to be spent on this. They also wanted all the online modes from Super Street Fighter IV to be carried over, despite these being too radically different games. If this were not enough, when Capcom gave perfectly valid explanations to each of these, such as there being no Spectator Mode because the game already had enough trouble online, fans simply wrote Capcom off as being lazy, when it was far from the case.




This is the state of modern day gaming. This is why developers are turning towards social gaming on platforms that a larger percent of the population owns and is willing to play on. They are turning to a group that is more willing to take risk, that isn't looking for a false sense of practical objective value out of a luxry they spent 60 bucks on, and they aren't as well misinformed.

I'm hoping Nintendo's new console can bridge this gap, that it can bridge the gap between AAA and social gaming in a way that is beneficial to all involved, the current game enthusiast with the game market of the potential future. The rumored specs and the name Cafe all seem to point that they are very well headed in this direction, and Nintendo has always seen where the industry should head before, except for the gamecube, which was a little bit too inbred. With the Wii they saw this high development, high risk enviroment, and instead sough to lower risk and bring in more players. We can debate how effective they were at either of these goals, and numbers can in truth point both ways, but this in the industry that the entire industry needs to take. If Sony/Microsoft attempt to release another next gen consol based off of tech specs again, we will find ourselfs with systems more tuned towards a small and diminishing demographic than The Gamecube found itself pandoring towards.

TLR
Lower developement cost is what we need
I hope the next generation of consols take note of this.
I like My Little Pony.

 

[Pearwood]

(mmmm they all end in 2; I wonder if there's something here...)

I think expectations had a lot to do with that, out of the games you mentioned 3 of them I've played and absolutely loved along with a lot of other people.

But mostly I think it's to do with overhype, I don't agree that larger publishers should be split up but I think toning down the hype a bit would do everyone some good.

 

[Hitman Dread]

Unless your name is Nintendo though you can't afford to do that. Most game companies get the vast majority of their sales within their first few months, if not their first few. Most companies don't have the expendable income to have a title be purchased over a long period of time. They need that hype to get day 1 sales out the door to pay back their development cost as quickly as possible.

Again, this all comes to lowering cost and risk.

 

[Woodsey]

Dragon Age 2 - most problems born out of them trying something different
Portal 2 - lolwut? The only people who have actually complained about the game have only done so because they count textures as full-on content DLC, and believe the entire game to be only 4 hours long
Crysis 2 - ehh... I guess
Mass Effect 2 - most people loved it (if you'll notice, those who didn't seem to believe that role-playing is nothing but stats-management)